Abyss
by Pluma Desatada
Summary: A monster lives in Tony's shadow and sleeps under his bed.
1. Chapter 1

The potato sack catches on Tony's ears as it's pulled off his head, and the Afghan sun immediately blinds him.

Somebody shoves him from behind.

Disoriented as he is by the sun's glare, Tony misses the way the terrain slopes down. The weight of the car battery makes him tip sideways, and he nearly falls.

Only the man who saved his life grabbing him by the elbow keeps him upright.

His hand is all spidery fingers, more suited to clockwork or a piano than playing Operation with Tony's ribcage, but it's strong. It's a claw in Tony's flesh, begging him to pay attention.

And pay attention Tony does. He squints his eyes and looks around, seeing men in rags with rifles hanging off their necks. Seeing piles and piles of rocket launchers, submachine guns, assault rifles, missiles, grenades—all with his name on them.

_His_ weapons.

In the hands of terrorists.

And here he's just agreed to build them more just to stop the torture.

Tony clutches the car battery closer, feeling its harsh lines dig into his stomach. His chest hurts, and it's not all because of the holes someone dug around in to fish out shrapnel or the electromagnet embedded in it.

Abu Bakaar says something in some language that isn't English. A new one that Tony hasn't learned enough of yet to translate.

The man who mined his chest for shrapnel does it for him. "He wants to know what you think."

Tony looks Abu in the eyes. "I think they've got a lot of my weapons," he answers. Stating the obvious would make it sound like a joke, except there's no punchline.

His captor turns to the cache with open hands and a proud smile. He says something long and loud, looking around, making sure everyone is hearing.

"He says they have everything you need to build a Jericho Missile," the man who hooked Tony's heart to a battery translates, sounding bored. His accent is approximately British; the mark of a man who learned it in a school. His glasses and his balding head make him look meek. "He wants you to make the list of materials."

Tony watches Abu like a hawk; Raza watches him right back.

"He says for you to start working immediately," the man who_ saved his life—_Tony still can't wrap his head around that one_—_continues. His voice is now tinted with irony, like he can't actually believe this is happening. "When you're done, he will set you free."

Their captor offers Tony his hand. His eyes say, _Come on, choose wisely_.

Tony shakes it and grins, because _there_ is the punchline. "No, he won't," he tells his only friend, smiling at Abu Bakaar like a politician smiles at his opposing number in a televised debate.

"No, he won't," his fellow captive confirms, smiling too.

o

The desert is cold as fuck at night.

Tony acts grateful for the woolen beanie and fingerless gloves they gave him—amazing what ceasing to resist can do for his hosts' hospitality—but he isn't. He's not grateful for basic human decency; they only did it because if he dies of hypothermia or his fingers freeze off, they get no Jericho. But what does it matter, when he's dying either way? Either the shrapnel gets to his heart, or the Tony tries to escape through the maze of cave systems and they shoot him down.

There is no way out.

"I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark," says the man who saved his life in vain, pacing. "But they will never find you in these mountains."

_Of course he will_, Tony thinks, eyes fixed upon the crackling fire. _But not in time._ He pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders. Huddling around a fire in an oil drum while covered in dirty woolen layers is undignified, but dammit, who cares. His chest hurts more than his pride.

The man plops down in front of him, or as close as he can get when Tony is facing the fire. "Look," he says, sounding ready for a little heart-to-heart—like he's staging an intervention for a friend. "What you just saw, that is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work, in the hands of those murderers."

Yep. Tony called it. He tries to smile, but his mouth tastes too bitter. He doesn't answer or even move at all, not wanting to encourage his cellmate to tell him what he already knows.

"Is that how you want to go out?" the man asks. Soft. Not gentle.

_Shut up_, Tony thinks, shaking from cold and imminent death. It's going to happen, he just knows it. And this time, there's no one to bail him out. There's no waking up. He should do something, yes, but what's the point?

"Is this the last act of defiance of the _great_ Tony Stark?" his tormentor demands, disgusted at Tony's passivity.

_Shut. Up. _Tony thinks again, wishing he could put this man on mute. He doesn't need to hear this. He already knows.

Yet the man he owes his life to presses on, relentless. "Or are you going to do something about—"

"Why should I do anything?" Tony interrupts, sick and tired already. Maybe if he says something ugly enough, he'll be left alone? He needs to be alone. "They're going to kill me, you, either way." Even if he somehow manages... "And if they don't I'll probably be dead in a week." And Loki will arrive too late to save him. He swallows around the burning knot in his throat.

"Then it's a very important week for you, isn't it?" the man asks.

Tony's jaw clenches. His last week. He hates it, but he's gonna have to figure out a way to draw out his death. He's had an idea and is currently calculating the odds that it will work.

Loki will come for him. Tony just needs to stay alive until then. And maybe figure a way out.

o

Tony has no idea how the man does it. One language going in through one ear and another coming out of his mouth. Amazing.

Tony doesn't care, because suddenly he's the one making demands.

_I want this place well-lit._

_I need welding gear._

_I need a soldering station._

Suddenly, he's the conductor to this orchestra of murderers and rapists. He just keeps giving instructions. Bring me this and that. Put those there. I need this other thing. Unwashed men scurry about like bees.

_I need helmets._

_I'm gonna need some goggles._

_I would like a smelting cup._

Suddenly, it's hard to keep a straight face.

o

Dismantling the weapons is a job of precision, but it doesn't take up a lot of mental capacity.

They are alone, so they talk a bit. Might as well get to know the man who saved your life in a cave with a box of scraps, right?

Tony learns many things. Who the terrorists are, why they have his weapons, a little bit of how. Learns that he has allies in the unlikeliest of places.

Learns that the man that saved his life has hands as steady as a surgeon when said man pours out the core of Tony's new heart.

Of course he does, or else Tony would be dead already.

Eight languages. Doctor in physics. Can perform open-heart surgery.

"What do I call you?" Tony asks.

"My name is Yinsen," the man replies after a moment.

"Nice to meet you," Tony says, watching the palladium fill the mold.

Yinsen watches him and smiles. "Nice to meet you, too."

o

The miniaturized version of the arc reactor_ works_, and Tony doesn't know how to feel.

Accomplished? Excited? Proud? Relieved?

He holds a Nobel Prize in his hands and yet he can't stop staring at the eerie blue light it emits because it's not green.

It's not green and he misses Loki. It's almost been ten days now, and he hasn't come.

What if something happened to him?

"What can it generate?" Yinsen asks, as lost in the glow as Tony.

Tony blinks. "lf my math is right, and it always is, three gigajoules per second."

That's a barrel of oil combusted every two seconds.

"That could run your heart for 50 lifetimes," Yinsen observes. He sounds amazed.

When was the last time someone who wasn't Loki took in something he'd made and didn't look at him like he's the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Tony glances at the bottle of shrapnel sitting on a corner of his workstation. "Yeah," he agrees belatedly, "or something big for fifteen minutes." He picks up his car battery and toddles over to a pile of papers, which he carries back to show Yinsen.

Separately they look like nothing. Doodles. Maybe schematics for weapons.

Tony flattens them out over the arc reactor.

Placed on top of each other, the papers are a technical drawing of a mechanical suit.

"What is it?" Yinsen asks.

Tony lets his hands drop to his sides, and the sheets of paper roll up by themselves. "Plan B."

Yinsen arches an eyebrow at him. "What's plan A?"

The corners of Tony's mouth draw up in something more to do with an ax than a smile. "My hairdresser."

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN: **next chapter will be updated on Thursday or when I get 5 reviews, whatever happens first._


	2. Chapter 2

_"Your hairdresser?" Yinsen asks._

_Tony snorts. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous when said like that. "Help me get a forge going and I'll explain."_

_Yinsen sighs. "I will go ask for more coal." _

_Tony grins._

* * *

><p>There is a monster under Tony's bed.<p>

Well. Either that, or a particularly rabid dust bunny, going by how the tips of his index, middle and ring finger are wearing a belt of red beads. Tony looks down at his hand in amazement, admiring the neat row of tiny bleeding cuts, and decides _yeah, no,_ _monster. _Also, belatedly, _ouch_.

The cuts sting pleasantly when he disinfects them. Now, Tony is not a masochist; it's just that he gets a special kick out of killing whatever bacteria are trying to get into his body, and when he pours the ethanol over his hand he can actually _feel_ it happening. They are deeper than he thought initially, going well into the meat of his fingers. The contrast of the drip-drip-drip of red on the white porcelain of his sink gives him vertigo.

He really should go to the hospital. But there are one or two needle pinpricks in the area of the inner elbow of his left arm and he really doesn't want to deal with the questions, the disappointment, or the rehab. It's just recreational anyway; he can quit whenever he wants. Not like he needs it: this isn't a hallucination because he isn't high.

Blinking his eyes back into focus, Tony wraps his bleeding hand in a towel and pokes his head out of the room. Seeing the coast is clear, he makes a run for the servants' quarters.

Somebody here must know where to find some superglue in this God-forsaken mansion.

o

Somehow, he manages to find Jarvis before he has to do his rounds of the old Stark country house. The butler is possibly the only person in Tony's life that has treated him like a real person, and this time is no different.

"You should go to the hospital, Young Master," Jarvis says as he wipes the cuts on Tony's index finger with sterilized gauze. "There is a strong chance of these getting infected." There is ease born of long practice in the way he moves—he's been taking care of Tony's cuts, scrapes and blisters since Tony was a toddler exploring his father's workshop for the first time.

Tony watches as he dabs a tiny drop of superglue on a cut and holds it closed with latex-covered fingers. "Not with the way they bled, let me tell you," he replies flippantly, fascinated by how quickly the cyanoacrylates bond the edges of his flesh together.

They aren't using medical-grade superglue because the veterinary doctor has a free day that day and had left his office locked, and they—read: Jarvis—couldn't find the key anywhere. Instead, Jarvis is using commercial-grade stuff, but he opened a new bottle just for Tony. It will be fine.

"Still," Jarvis insists, fixing up the next cut with slightly more force than strictly necessary.

Tony winces, but doesn't relent. "_If_ they get infected, I'll go see a doctor." In his head, he completes the sentence with _provided the track marks are healed enough that I can cover them with some concealer._

Jarvis says nothing, but his twitching eyebrow and his harsh fingers speak for themselves.

o

Tony returns to his room with a mummified hand and a sandwich, the latter due to Jarvis being secretly a mother hen and constantly feeding him because _you are a growing boy, Young Master_. (It's just an excuse to pamper him, though. Tony has looked up statistics and nutrition charts and estimated what height he'll be as an adult, so he knows that only a miracle will make him grow to six feet.)

The Walkman hasn't moved from where it fell under his bed. It's still playing the AC/DC mixtape Rhodey made for him, though the noise is barely audible coming from the headphones. Tony can see it from where he's standing on one foot, kicking the door shut with the other: lying deceptively still, as though there weren't a toothy monster from Hell lurking under his bed ready to bite his hands off the second he tries to take it.

It's funny, he thinks. He can see the bait, but he can't see the monster. Just the normal and expected shadows under the bed. It's not even his usual bed, as this is not his usual bedroom nor is this his usual house, so there's none of the debris that spaces under the bed tend to accumulate—like shoes or screwdrivers or, in one memorable occasion, half a blunt that had scorched the carpet before putting itself out. Probably not a raccoon, then; definitely something supernatural.

Tony's already entertaining fantasies of discovering a new genus and finally being known as something other than '_You_ are Howard Stark's son?'

Knowing better than to stick his hand under there, he opens his closet and grabs the only wire clothes hanger. Stuffing one end of his sandwich into his mouth to free his hand, he removes the neatly pressed jeans that had been hanging from it and tosses them to the floor. He takes a bite and sets his sandwich down on the nightstand before sitting cross-legged about two feet away from the bed, facing it. He carefully twists the metal free and straightens the hanger as best he can, leaving only the hook intact.

When he slides it under the bed, hoping to scare the monster into coming out, he feels something hit it. He instantly sits up straighter and tugs it out.

Or tries, anyway, because apparently the hook snagged on thin air and is refusing to come out.

Gaping, Tony tugs again, and thin air tugs back. Along the hook, perfectly visible to Tony in the half-shadow, the paint starts chipping and flaking off.

The _whatever_ is biting the wire. Actually _chewing_ on it; Tony can feel the vibrations as the tiny (he assumes) teeth rake over the wire.

"Huh," he breathes, closing his mouth and letting his eyebrows climb back down to their usual place. "Are you hungry?" he wonders, his eyes flitting to his sandwich. _Maybe… _he thinks, his bandaged hand twinging in pain. Maybe the thing eats meat? Pulling the wire out with some effort, he grabs the sandwich, tears off a corner of the ham slice, and impales it on the wire hook.

This time, when he slides the clothes hanger under the bed, there's no reaction at first.

Thinking he might actually have been hallucinating all along, Tony pulls it back.

The piece of ham remains behind.

"Well, look at that," Tony breathes, fascinated. He lays down on his side to look more comfortably under the bed.

The ham is being cut into smaller pieces—no, not cut. _Masticated_.

The invisible thing is chewing it with invisible teeth and moving it around its invisible mouth with an invisible tongue. The way the ham squishes and breaks into soft paste is disgusting. The way the bolus is divided into lumps as they all squeeze down an invisible esophagus in single file is absolutely revolting.

Tony can't look away. He might be gaping, but he's way past caring. His monster is _so totally rad_, and he can't help but wonder when exactly the ex-ham will cease existing in the visible spectrum—when it reaches the stomach? when it's assimilated?—because the _thing_ sure as hell hasn't been accumulating opacity with each meal.

And then, as he's lost in internal disquisitions, a horrible noise comes from under the bed; a mixture between nails on a chalkboard, the crunch of a cockroach under a foot, and the wet, guttural sound of gagging.

The entity retches ham all over the floor.

Tony covers his mouth and runs for the toilet.

o o o

Successive experiments determine that the monster under Tony's bed can't eat human food.

Tony tests several hypotheses. At first, he thinks it might not be carnivorous, contrary to the size and sharpness of its fangs, and he tests this by offering it his favorite non-meat dish, pasta. When the monster retches that back up, too, he considers it might have Celiac's disease—who knows how monstrous physiology works, right?—and tries feeding it a lentil burger. It throws up both the patty and the buns with equal relish, or so it seems to Tony, who is the one cleaning up the messes.

Speaking of cleaning, there is one thing to be said for having an invisible roommate living under his bed: his floors have never been cleaner.

Once he decides that traditional feeding will not yield any results, he changes tracks and attempts to get an idea of the monster's proportions and general makeup. The first thing he tries is checking is if the monster is absorbs electromagnetic waves in other parts of the spectrum. Infrared light yields nothing, and neither does ultraviolet.

If he's going to see this entity, he's gonna have to wait. The country house, despite belonging to Howard Stark, is woefully lacking in scientific equipment that isn't related to the practice of veterinary medicine.

Maybe if he can get it out from under the bed, he'll take an X-Ray, but he doesn't like his chances—no, wait, the blood work lab! He won't need to take the whole monster, just a few samples.

This gives him a second wind, and he sacrifices a gardening glove in the name of science. He goads the little fellow into biting his protected hand and holds it still as he then tries to take samples with his other hand. He really doesn't know what to expect, if scales or fur or maybe—yuck—naked skin, and he's pleasantly surprised to find that his new test subject is actually warm and fluffy. He forgets about science himself for a moment, absently stroking the silken, invisible fur.

That's enough time for the monster to figure out what Tony is doing and bite him on the wrist.

Tony feels the teeth sinking into his flesh and doesn't understand what's happening, not right away. Then his entire arm feels like he dipped it in gasoline and set it on fire. His back bends over with how much it hurts, and he has to rest his head against the bed frame because otherwise, it seems, it might just float off his shoulders. "_Ffffffuck,_" he hisses, paralyzed, and then he remembers he still has a hand free. It's still covered in bandages and a thick rubber glove, but it's a pretty good impromptu war hammer.

The second his fist connects, the monster lets out a tiny screech—it sounds like a shot glass breaking, as opposed to a whole window pane—and lets go.

This, Tony can tell because there's suddenly no resistance; he falls back on his ass, clutching his bleeding wrist to his chest, and hauls some air into his lungs. Blinking the tears out of his eyes, he looks down at his mangled arm and averts his gaze immediately.

The damage is not something superglue can fix.

Swallowing his pride, he yells for Jarvis. It takes him a couple of tries to get sound past his strangled throat, but then he hears hurried footsteps right outside his door. He hears his name through the rush of blood in his ears and thinks, _I'm okay._

Then he faints.

o o o

One of the nurses sees the track marks on Tony's arm and tells Maria, who in turn tells Howard when they get back home. They have a huge argument over whose fault it is that Tony is a drug addict ("Maybe if you gave _your son_ the time of the day now and then—!" "Me? _Your _son gets all his bad habits from you and your liberal, permissive—!"), and Tony can still hear it from his room where he locked himself in after they started fighting.

He's on his bed, rolled onto his side and pressing his pillow over his ears. He vows to invent a way for humans to be able to close their ears like they close their eyes. Maybe an implant—

A loud crash interrupts his thoughts. Something made of glass has just broken into shards; knowing Howard, he just threw his glass at Maria.

_No, wait, maybe she decided to express her anger by destroying the vintage china collection that was mounted on the wall of the dining room, _Tony thinks bitterly, punching the mattress. He wishes he had his Walkman right now—Rhodey's stupid noisy music would definitely fit his mood perfectly _and_ block out his parents' shouting—but the invisible squatter under his bed is holding it hostage. He kicks the wall in frustration and mutters, "I hope you're happy."

A light scratching noise comes from under the bed. Like claws being raked over the wooden slats.

Tony huffs and stares at his bandaged hand. "Yeah, yeah, you're an asshole. Got it the first time. No need to gloat." He could use some coke right about now, except that with his hands wrapped in layers of gauze and immobilized, and therefore he can't take advantage of the high by using the workshop—oh, no, wait, right. There _is_ no workshop here because they are in the middle of butt fuck nowhere.

He wishes he were eighteen already so he could legally rent an apartment for the summer vacation instead of coming 'home' from Uni.

The monster grumbles.

o

About half an hour later, Howard and Maria graduate to not speaking to each other (read: normal life is normal) and Tony is bored out of his mind. He would go to the library or maybe get Jarvis to drive him to the closest town, but he doesn't want his father giving him the if-the-press-found-out lecture, doesn't want his mother mourning all the money that could have gone into clothes but was spent buying the nurse's silence, doesn't want to face Jarvis' disappointment, so he stays in his room.

His room, where there is literally nothing to do but listen to music—except the monster has the Walkman.

He rolls onto his back and kicks ineffectively at the bed. Then holds his hands over his face and considers them.

Is he willing to risk another bite to get the Walkman back?

Sighing, he drops his hands to the pillow on either side of his face and whines. His gaze slides sideways, falling from the ceiling onto the gardening glove and the unbent clothes hanger sitting on his dresser, and his eyes widen.

Yes. Yes, he is.

He sits up with a grin.

The sun is setting, its light casting Tony's room in an orange glow. It will soon be down completely, so Tony turns on the nightstand lamp. Sure, the monster is invisible, but he prefers not to be in the dark anyway. He puts on the glove as a defensive measure and grabs the clothes hanger, before sitting cross-legged next to the side of the bed.

Just like before. This time, though, he's prepared.

He slides the wire under the bed and moves it from side to side. There's nothing to use as bait, so he isn't really expecting anything; he really just wants to bug the monster. He's making mental notes to try electrifying the cable when he hits something. _Jackpot_, he thinks, and prods it with the metal.

The entity _is_ there—Tony can feel it as he digs around, tracing its contours—but it's nonresponsive.

Hoping he hasn't killed his only source of entertainment, Tony grabs the lamp and shines it under the bed. What he sees leaves him puzzled.

Last time he looked, there had been _nothing_ under the bed except dust and monster puke. Now, he can make out a slightly darker section of air, fuzzy around the edges in a way that makes it impossible to determine its shape or size. Just that: a blob of shadow that might have been cast by his head if he didn't have the light source in his hand.

_That's interesting_, Tony thinks, forgetting his annoyance. Lying completely on the floor, he stretches his protected hand towards the conglomeration of darkness. He manages to snag the wire hook on _something_ and tugs on it gently, tongue poking from between his teeth as he pulls what he thinks is the monster closer to his hand.

When it's close enough, the blob of slightly darker air _moves_, engulfing his fingers.

Tony freezes, but there is no biting. At first, he thinks it's just the glove protecting him, but no, there really _is_ no biting. There are teeth, sure—teeth he can feel through the glove and gauze, and just _how_ wickedly sharp are they anyway?—but they aren't trying to sink into his flesh and sever his fingertips.

No; they are _nibbling_.

The monster under his bed is_ nibbling_ at his hand like a playful puppy. Not that Tony has ever had a puppy, kitten, or any sort of pet that wasn't a lab rat, but he's seen it happen on TV.

Gaping, Tony wiggles his fingers, feeling around the inside of the thing's mouth.

It lets go immediately. The darkness retreats from his hand and quivers, its surface rippling with perfect, if fuzzy, wave fronts.

"Hey, no, don't go," Tony finds himself saying. "Come here, you little beast." There is no longer any anger or resentment in his voice, just the slightly nasal baritone he acquired this year layered with soothing overtones. He moves the clothes hanger again as if trying to provoke the blob of faint darkness into playing.

Miraculously, it works: the area around the hook gets darker, like something is casting a very fuzzy shadow over it, and Tony can feel the pull.

He tugs the monster closer again, offers it his hand again. This time, though, when it bites, he pulls it even closer and drops the wire. Since its mouth is entertained, he takes a risk and sneaks his now free hand under the bed. Hesitantly, ready to pull out at any second, he touches the slightly darker lump of air.

It's all soft fur and a warm, solid body, just as before.

The difference is that, this time, Tony's monster doesn't bite him.

This time, it purrs.

o

Petting seemingly empty air when his hand is telling him it's feeling something warm and fluffy?

Completely disconcerting.

With his eyes closed, though, it feels like he's petting a particularly fat cat. It's not like he can see anything there, anyway, so maybe keeping them closed is best.

The monster is strangely docile. It actually climbs onto his lap—or, _oozes,_ more like, but "climb" doesn't make his brain feel like it's standing over a precipice with only empty air and cognitive constructs to hold it up—and curls up there, right in the hollow of his legs, pinning him down with its improbable weight. Its body is warm, no, _hot_, and the heat bleeds through his ripped jeans into his legs like sun on a winter day.

_Did it feel this hot before?_ Tony wonders, trying to remember. He can still feel sharp teeth scraping against his gloved fingers, almost affectionate in their gentleness; can still feel the monster's maw playfully teasing him like it never bit him, like he learned his lesson and his place. Yet, he can also feel a snout at his _other_ hand asking for head scratches, can feel a cold nose sniffing and bumping at his fingers, and a hard scratchy tongue giving them kitten licks that feel like sweeps of sandpaper.

His heart beats faster, adrenaline surging even though there's nothing to trigger a fight-or-flight response other than the fact that the little monster under his bed has two heads—or maybe more, except he only has two hands to be nibbled. Or maybe just one, and the monster exists in a superposition—no, no, touch counts as "observation".

Besides, quantum theory applies to fundamental particles. Just bosons and fermions and hadrons, not… Not whole completely-transparent and mind-boggling beings.

Tony opens his eyes and stares down into his lap, seeing nothing at all there except maybe a patch of what looks like almost-dry moisture on his jeans. "What _are_ you?" he breathes, transfixed.

The monster turns around in a circle and plops itself back down, rumbling happily.

o o o

Three days later, Tony wakes up from a nightmare screaming, only to find the monster—

—sitting on his chest.

So, the feeling of breathlessness wasn't just in the dream, after all.

_Asshole_, he thinks, reaching up through the darkness to push the ball of fur off.

It doesn't budge.

Tony pushes more urgently.

It still doesn't budge, and it adds claws like IV needles digging into his chest.

"Please," Tony wheezes, changing tactics in one last ditch effort.

The pushing turns into stroking.

The monster shudders like flan and then, thank God, melts down the side of his body.

Tony gasps for breath, clutching his shirt with a fist over his burning lungs. That… that was too close to the nightmare for comfort. He swallows hard, remembering the horrible feeling of being swallowed by the monster. At first he'd loved it—cocooned into a pocket of fur and warmth, what's not to love? But slowly the temperature went up until the heat became unbearable, and the space grew smaller and smaller, squeezing him—urk. _No, don't think about it_, he tells himself, wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.

The monster finishes dripping into a blob in the crook of his arm. Its fur tickles Tony's armpit, and it trembles warmly against his ribs.

It feels so much like a girl after sex that Tony finds himself stroking it automatically. When he realizes what he's doing, he stops immediately.

And then he feels serrated knives scraping over his chest, just hard enough to raise the skin but not cut it.

Swallowing hard, he resumes the petting.

* * *

><p><em>When Tony looks up from his soldering, he finds Yinsen staring at him. "What?" he says slowly. "He was cute."<em>

_Yinsen shakes his head and hands him another flat piece of steel._


	3. Chapter 3

_"I still cannot believe you befriended your __qarin_,_" Yinsen tells Tony as he extracts the battery attachment from his chest with steady hands._

_Tony, lying on his back on the pile of rags that is his cot, stares at the ceiling. "I have no idea what that means," he says, wishing Yinsen would hurry up. The cave is cold and the metal pressed up against his racing heart is too good a conductor of heat—he feels like he's freezing from the inside out._

_"Muslim mythology," Yinsen replies, wiring the electromagnet to the arc reactor. "Never mind."_

_The feeling of cockroaches crawling under Tony's skin goes away after a few moments as the fragments of metal cease moving, and he sits up. _

_No headrush, that's good. _

_"Tell me more about your monster," Yinsen says, holding his hand out to help Tony stand._

_Tony takes it._

* * *

><p>Someone is getting married in the town, and the Starks have been cordially invited.<p>

Tony _hates_ being cordially invited places, but Maria loves a party and Howard loves making business connections so they make it very obvious that either he puts on the stupid tuxedo and _behaves,_ or "else".

(Tony knows better than to ask _or else what_? by this point; he may be a teenager, but he's not entirely lacking in self-preservation.)

He brings a condom in his breast pocket, concealed to look like a pocket square even though having it is embarrassing as hell, just in case there are any pretty girls willing to give him a go at them. He doesn't want to get a poor country girl pregnant with the heir to the Stark fortune; he wouldn't wish Howard and Maria as in-laws to his worst enemies, if he had any.

Turns out that he underestimated the country people: they aren't uncultured rednecks he could roll around in the mud and make fart jokes with, they're all snobs like his parents who own ranches because it's apparently the choice thing to own, and their children (all heirs and heiresses, goddammit) around Tony's age are all preppy douchebags who can only talk about who'll get into what Ivy League college.

The girls are wearing _pearl earrings,_ for fuck's sake.

Tony resigns himself to an evening of boredom—

—until he sees the waiter coming his way.

He's tall, well-muscled under the cheap white shirt and black waistcoat, and has earnest blue eyes, soft wisps of blond hair, and skin tanned golden like apple pie crust.

Tony's mouth drops open a little because, _yeah_. The boy—man?—boy looks like he'd be more at home in denim jeans and muddy work boots, possibly shirtless, shoveling hay into a horse stall. Or, or riding the horse, yeah; Tony can definitely picture him on a horse, lassoing a stray calf or something.

It's weird. He's never had this strong a reaction towards a guy before. But, hey, college has made him nothing if not open-minded, so he's willing to roll with it.

"Hey," he says warmly as he grabs a flute of something from the gorgeous Captain America look-alike.

Mr. All-American Beefcake's eyebrows rise. "Are you old enough to have that?" he murmurs low enough that the shitty reception music muffles his words for other listeners.

Technically speaking, Tony isn't actually old enough. But hey, he's been drinking the stuff since he was six—the only useful thing his father taught him: how to handle his alcohol—and he's not gonna let a goody-two-shoes keep him away from the one good thing about being here. He merely quirks an eyebrow at the boy. "You going to ask for my ID?" he asks. "I assure you, I'm perfectly legal," he lies, giving the fellow an unsubtle once-over as he sips his illegal drink.

The waiter blinks at him, like the innuendo went over his head, and then, slowly, the light bulb turns on. Tony can tell because Mr. Apple Pie is suddenly looking everywhere but at him. "I believe you," he says, walking stiffly away from the deviant sexual predator that just hit on him.

Figures. Tony rolls his eyes and shrugs. At least he didn't get a sneer or, worse, a loud refusal. Which, now that he thinks about it with something other than his dick—maybe his bruised ego—could have easily happened and he is an _idiot_ for forgetting where and in whose company he is. Fuck, he feels like such a fuck-up.

o

They get seated for the reception dinner. The food is good and there are several delicious-looking courses.

Tony isn't hungry. He got up to go to the men's room midway through the second course and saw Goody-Two-Shoes making out with one of the bridesmaids behind a column just five minutes ago and he's boiling over with jealousy. It's not that he actually wanted Mr. Hunky that much; the thing that really got to him was the way his hands were holding the girl's tiny waist, curling into the fabric of her dress like he wanted to fuse them together.

A waitress comes to take his plate and replace it with yet another one; an endless parade of expensive delicacies that Tony is in too black a mood to enjoy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the bridesmaid in the yellow dress return surreptitiously and join her friends. Her hair is down where before it was up, and one of them notices, picking at it and arching one eyebrow. They giggle like chickens and shove playfully at her shoulder.

Tony has never hated anyone as much in his life.

Out of the blue, the bridesmaid lets out a pained yelp and tips backwards in her chair. Her friends freeze at first, shocked, and then start screaming and pointing.

Some of the men, including the groom, get up from their chairs and run to their aid. They help the crying girl into the house.

The front of her dress is shredded and bloody, and the tears are making her mascara run down her cheeks.

People are on their knees, lifting the tablecloth and peering under the table in search of whoever did this.

Tony doesn't join in. He already knows.

The culprit is sitting on the ground next to him, its furry presence bleeding warmth into Tony's leg.

"I take back every bad thing I ever said about you," he murmurs under his breath as he reaches down to stroke the purring creature.

o

Tony returns to his room after brushing his teeth and finds the Walkman sitting on his unmade bed, dusty and shining with slobber in places. He stares at it, transfixed, and only snaps out of it when he sees something move in the edge of his vision.

It's the monster, hovering close to the edge of the shadow cast by the bed. It doesn't have a face that Tony can see, but Tony gets the sense that it's watching him expectantly.

A peace offering?

Slowly, Tony approaches the bed and picks up the device. Turning it around in his hands pensively, he plops down gracelessly on the bed. "Thanks," he says simply, pressing _play_ and watching the cassette wheels turn. Faintly audible music comes from the headphones still miraculously plugged in. "I thought you'd eaten it," he confesses truthfully, pausing the device and setting it aside. He's actually pretty shocked that his pet monster has kept it safe.

Up until that point, he has thought of the monster as nothing more than an invisible and particularly sharp cat, but now? That evening, when it appeared out of the blue to ruin someone's night for Tony, and the fact that it had given the Walkman back and was watching for his reaction, demonstrated a sentience Tony hadn't even considered possible.

Not knowing what else to do, he pats the spot on his right.

What looks like just a patch of damp spreads up the coverlet and onto the bed, and soon Tony feels a feverish warmth snuggle into his thigh. He carefully reaches down—he can't see where the monster ends, so he doesn't know where to stop his hand—and sinks his fingers into the soft, pulsing fur.

Almost immediately, a maw opens under his hand and closes around it, needle-like teeth pressing into his skin barely gently enough not to cut him. It feels like a warning.

Tony snorts. "I'm not going to hurt you, stupid," he says, bringing up his other hand and stroking along the monster's side to illustrate. "I'm just petting you."

The patch of damp pulses with darkness that soon fades away, leaving it back in its previous transparency level, and Tony's hand is released.

Barely believing this is happening, Tony strokes the monster all over its furry contours, mapping it out. It's soft all over, malleable like Play Doh, lacking any sort of structure like bones or cartilage. It feels… rather a lot like a furry throw pillow. He likes it.

The monster purrs and snuggles closer.

Feeling unexpectedly content, Tony puts the headphones on, presses _play_ on the Walkman, and lays down on the bed, curling slightly to accommodate the invisible furball.

It doesn't like the change, apparently, because it slithers down to the floor and back under the bed.

Tony shakes his head fondly and turns off the light.

o o o

As it turns out, being stuck in a country house with technology that was already considered old twenty years ago sucks. Tony doesn't notice at first, what with the newly returned Walkman and the books he brought with him thanks to Jarvis' advice. But when he's read all his books twice and he runs out of spare batteries, it dawns on him that, even with the rad new life-form he discovered under his bed, there is nothing to while away the hours doing.

And now that he knows the monster under his bed has some semblance of sentience, jerking off in his room is highly unsettling.

Bored as he is, he begs Jarvis to drive him to town so he can chat up girls, play in the arcade, or whatever. Just having someone his own age would be golden.

The butler, however, says he's too busy.

It's a lie, and Tony can tell.

But it's not like he can complain to his parents. Howard went back home days ago, having become irritable with the boredom, and Maria is too busy sunbathing and throwing tea parties with her fellow country snobs to worry about her bored teenager.

Tony just wants to get high.

He waits until the sun is baking everything its rays touch and everyone has gone inside to wait it out, and hot wires the tractor.

o

People give him weird looks when they see him riding a mud-stained tractor into the main road of the town, but apparently no one cares enough to say anything.

Tony parks it in front of the movie theater—well, more like _stalls_, but who cares about semantics, right? Anyway, he's never driven stick shift before, so he figures he did pretty okay. At least he didn't crash into anything important on the way.

The cinema is playing an R-rated movie, for some reason, which means that Tony can't buy tickets legally.

The dude selling the tickets looks pretty shady, though, so Tony gets away with it by handing him an extra twenty bucks.

Tony is the only single person among a sea of couples; he stands out like a sore thumb. He buys popcorn and makes sure to eat it during the movie with his mouth open for extra crunch, even though the motion picture they are showing really, _really_ puts him off eating.

Yeah. Gore and crunchy kernels don't go well together.

Suddenly, he feels something furry trail along his bare ankles (it was so hot he couldn't be bothered to wear sneakers) and nearly screams, but he catches himself at the last second. Heart in his throat, he kicks the thing aside.

The screech it lets out rattles the walls of the building, and the people in it, already primed for terror, let out such panicked screams—in a part of the movie that isn't actually scary—that the movie stops and the lights turn on.

"Oops," Tony murmurs, sinking low into his seat. He glares at the patch of damp on the cinema's carpet accusingly. "I don't remember bringing you here."

The monster scales his legs like a centipede with feet made of pins and needles, and burrows under his shirt. The sensation of live fur on his bare skin gives Tony goose bumps, but at this point in their acquaintance he knows better than to try to move the monster when it's so close to his flesh.

Police start filing into the theater, and Tony breaks into a cold sweat because he doesn't even remotely look old enough to be there. Figuring that yep, the movie is ruined either way, he stands up and leaves with his head bowed. He's half afraid he looks like he's pregnant, what with the monster still huddled under his shirt, but when his arms go to cradle it—

There's nothing there.

No bulge, no weight, no mass at all. Just his own belly—slightly pudgy thanks to the starchy cafeteria food and his reluctance to hit the gym—and a slightly sweaty shirt.

For a second, Tony's panic turns into something else entirely and he freezes in the middle of the aisle with his hands around his stomach.

"Are you well?" somebody asks, the words reaching Tony as though through a wall of water.

Tony looks up and thinks,_ shit, policeman_. He looks around for inspiration for a lie—

_rotten food_

—and it magically comes on its own. He says immediately, "Yeah, I just ate some bad food," and gives the man his million-buck grin, the same one he saves for pictures with his dad. "Always thought the eat-by date was a suggestion, you know?"

The policeman barks out a laugh and slaps Tony on the back, almost bowling him over. "Get out, sonny," he says, amused, nodding towards the exit. "And drink some milk. It'll settle your stomach." He pats his own potbelly, conveying that he speaks from ample experience.

_Yes_, Tony thinks, hoping his relief isn't visible on his face, and then, _never been so glad to be white in my life, _which instantly has him feeling like shit because he remembers Rhodey and how bad he has it. If _he_ had been the one acting suspiciously in a movie theater after people came running out screaming bloody murder, especially in this ass-backwards town? He'd have been hauled in without questions.

He gets out of the cinema without further trouble, still patting his abdomen now and then, wondering where the fuck the monster went. It's not at his back—he checked—and it couldn't possibly fit down his shorts, but Tony hadn't felt it slithering down his body.

Mysterious mystery is mysterious.

o

Having literally nothing better to do than eat, Tony goes for a burger and some ice-cream.

There is a shady-looking guy loitering in the diner's parking lot. With the experience of one whole year of college under his belt, Tony can tell he's a drug dealer.

Proof that even the tiniest, most Christian towns have some bad apples.

When Tony spots him, he thinks, _yes_. _Yes, just what I need_. Christmas came early, or something. He's hoping for some heroin rather than cocaine, because of the no-lab-to-do-science-under-the-influence thing—and, really, he just needs something to make boredom seem less terrible.

The guy looks at him weirdly but sells him a little baggie of sandy powder.

Right. Tony had been hoping for a miracle, apparently; he's just gotten used to the high-purity stuff. No IV, then. He'll just have to snort it, unless he can figure out a way to pick the lock to the local high school's lab…

The drug-dealer clears his throat pointedly.

Tony blinks. "Yeah?"

"You, erm," the guy starts and then stops, frowning. "Oh, I thought you… had two shadows for a moment." He points down at Tony feet.

Tony looks down instinctively and discovers he has only the same shadow that has been following him around since he could crawl. A second shadow, however, is not outside the realm of possibility, considering a certain fantastic inhabitant of under his bed.

Then his shadow grins at him, baring row after row of teeth like tiny serrated knives.

Tony looks up again and sees the guy's eyes bugging out of their sockets. He gives him an easy grin, jokes, "Gotta stop partaking of your of wares, man," and turns quickly around to hide his own unsettled expression.

Suddenly, he can't wait to get back to his room.

o

When he bought the heroin, Tony was planning on keeping it for another day when he was well and truly bored.

Jarvis ruins that plan by giving Tony a half-hour long lecture on responsibility and respect for other people's jobs, talking down to him like Tony were five.

Tony rolls his eyes and huffs a lot, but doesn't quite meet his gaze. There is no worse feeling in the world than Jarvis's disappointment, especially when it's over something he, personally, considered _not a big deal_ until the butler started telling him of all the work the ranch missed that day thanks to Tony stealing the tractor, a.k.a. essential ranch equipment or something.

Yeah, he fucked up, okay?

He withstands the hurt, disappointed rant with the tiny uncaring one-percent ivy-league smirk—the one that says, _I have more important things to do but I'll humor you because your struggles are hilarious, _and drives people up the wall—plastered on his face, humming noncommittally whenever Jarvis asks if he understands. The baggy of heroin is a burning coal in his pocket.

Jarvis lasts about twenty five minutes of getting progressively redder in the face before he chokes up on his own words, closes his eyes, and pinches the bridge of his nose. He lets out a long sigh that is two parts why-do-I-bother, three parts sadness, and one part maybe-I-should-just-quit, and presses his lips together bitterly.

_Really feeling like shit here_, Tony thinks, watching him turn his face away and leave without another word. The words _Come back! _and _I'm sorry! _and _Please don't leave me!_ vie on his tongue to be the first to be let out, but Howard has raised him never to admit mistakes (so long as it's not profession-related, in which case, fix the potentially deadly flaw first and _then_ admit it) so he can't say any of them.

Tony returns to his room and slams the door shut. Fists and stomach knotted into tight balls, he kicks the chair to the floor with a silent snarl and jumps onto his bed. He realizes he forgot to buy new batteries and punches the wall with the bottom of his fist, the fleshy bit. It doesn't hurt enough to be unpleasant and the hollow sound it makes is very satisfying, so he does it again.

And again.

His breath is hot steam burning his throat as it leaves the boiling pot of emotion that are his innards. Because, really, _fuck this_. He's a genius mind stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do for the next three weeks. What is he supposed to do all day, meditate? Sleep? _Of course_ he's fucking things up for entertainment. Why is it _his_ responsibility to behave and sit on his thumbs while he's being tortured with boredom?

A warm weight settles onto his chest, purring.

Tony instantly feels a little better. Is this what having a pet feels like? You are sad or angry, then suddenly a tiny furry creature seeks you out and vibrates on you and _poof!_ go the bad feelings? "Hi, there," he murmurs, closing his eyes and fumbling around until his hands meet fur.

The long hairs seem alive as they wiggle and curl around his fingers, digging into the creases in the skin.

It tickles a bit, and Tony frees his hands so he can pet his monster better.

It purrs more loudly, practically buzzing, and actually pushes up into the caresses.

If only humans were this easy to please.

Reminded of Jarvis and his own epic fuck-up, Tony digs into his pocket and withdraws the heroin. He'd considered snorting it, before, but now that he looks at it again, he doesn't like the color; he treasures his lungs too much. He entertains the notion of plugging it, but the monster sitting on his chest is growing heavier by the second and he doesn't want to move.

Eh, whatever. He's filthy rich, he can afford to waste this dose by taking it orally.

He opens the bag carefully so it won't spill and pours half the contents under his tongue, letting the powder sit. The taste is even more awful than he had expected, and he swallows the forming saliva quickly, trying to keep the heroin as undiluted as possible.

There is no rush, which he anticipated, and the high is mild, but still better than nothing. When the feeling of post-fantastic-sex afterglow sets in, all his problems pale in comparison to the beauty of the world and of being alive to enjoy it. And then, not even the monster's screeching and biting his fingers bloody before fleeing under the bed is enough to make him worry.

o o o

Tony rolls over and falls asleep during the high. When he wakes up, he finds he forgot to spit out the powder residue; the inside of his mouth tastes like absolute sewage.

The sun streaming through his window hurts his eyes, and he curses his past self for leaving the curtains open.

He can feel every ache in his body. His hands in particular; they are throbbing in time with his pulse. Remembering he still has some heroin left, he digs through his pockets—_ouch, ouch_—and pulls the little plastic bag out. He sticks a finger—oh, _wow_, the monster sure did a number on his hands!—into the powder and is about to rub it over his gums to ease the headache when a shadows shoots at him from a dark corner.

The monster throws him back to the bed and engulfs the hand holding the open bag of heroin.

It's hot. Hot enough that Tony feels like he dipped his arm into scalding water. "Ow, you—_fucker_—hurts," he bites out, shoving at the monster's translucent face(?) with his other hand. It doesn't budge, so he starts hitting it as hard as he can, and it's about as effective as hitting his mattress. "Leggo of me!"

The room is filled with a sound like a rusty metal gate of an abandoned building creaking suddenly on its hinges, ominous and blood-chilling.

By now inured to his pet monster's overdramatic eldritch-ness, it takes Tony perhaps a quarter of a second to realize that the monster is _growling_ at him, the ass. "Ugh, let go already!" he snarls, punching it again, and this time his hand sinks into it like into a foam cushion.

The invisible hairs close and knit over that hand too, keeping it trapped. The monster growls again, so high-pitched it cracks the glass in Tony's window.

With a huge sigh, Tony gives in and stops fighting. He makes a mental note to test the monster's strength one day, though. "Fine, you win," he tells it, not yet sure just how much English the thing understands.

Apparently enough, because it backs off, releasing Tony's hand and rippling agitatedly in his lap.

The bag, which before was half-full with heroin, is now empty.

Tony gapes at it. Either the monster under his bed is a junkie, or it has issues with Tony taking heroin...

The epiphany hits him like a tractor, and his mouth drops open a little more.

He pokes the monster in the side (he thinks) and manages, "Do you eat _emotions_?"

The rippling effect ceases for a second, like Tony startled the monster right back, and then it resumes at double frequency, so that the monster is practically buzzing.

Tony gets the feeling it's sweating nervously, or doing the monstrous version of it anyway. "Ha! Busted!" He grins triumphantly.

The monster buzzes even harder, numbing the skin in Tony's legs, and then it starts getting lighter and lighter.

Quickly grabbing the levitating ball of shadow, Tony curls up around it to prevent any other escape attempts. "You _do_," he tells the wiggling thing in sing-song, teasing but not cruel. "That's why you don't like the heroin. 'Cause it dulls my feelings, right?"

The wiggling stops.

Tony realizes he's actually hugging the monster under his bed to his chest. It feels just like he imagines a teddy might, squishy and furry, except it's warm and—and _snuggling_ _back,_ because apparently monsters are secret cuddlers?

The thing squirms in his arms, settling in more comfortably. It rubs against Tony's bare neck, the long fur tickling something fierce, and purrs.

Endeared despite himself, Tony lowers his legs and relaxes. He finds his eyes closing, but doesn't care. He can't remember the last time he got to hug someone like this, so warm and close and easy, and hell if he's not going to enjoy it while it lasts.

His hands still ache, but he can take care of them later. Right now, he's more interested in the monster's feeding habits. Its reaction to Tony taking the heroin makes sense, in retrospect. He'd been so angry, so hurt—such a feast for a being that fed on emotions, and he'd snatched it right out of its dripping maw.

"You son of a bitch," Tony laughs when another thing clicks. "You're training me like a dog!" Kicking and screaming whenever Tony does something it doesn't like, and then going all soft and warm and cuddly when Tony does things right. Yeah, no doubts about the intelligence of the little invisible fellow now.

_Manipulative little asshole_, he thinks, amused, and breaks into delighted chuckles.

The monster purrs more loudly.

o o o

The expression on Jarvis's face when he sees the state of Tony's hands nearly breaks Tony's heart, but he tells himself that a little remorse will serve Jarvis right.

Let's see him trying to police Tony's life again after this, right?

And yet, he still feels like shit when Jarvis silently brings out the first-aid kit and starts patching him up with _that_ face; still feels like saying that no, he didn't actually turn to self-harm because of their fight, that he's just a careless idiot with a very volatile pet, so it's not Jarvis's fault. But, as usual, the words get stuck in his throat, clogging his airways, so he doesn't.

Jarvis cooks Tony's favorite for a week straight, like he's trying to apologize, and it seems like he bends over backwards to please Tony whenever he sees him.

Tony takes to avoiding him, not wanting to see this when he knows he's the one at fault. He stays in his rooms or roams the vast grounds of the farm.

The monster rides with him, hidden safely in his shadow. Its presence is a marvelous repellent for insects and animals, which is great as far as mosquitoes and spiders are concerned but not so good when Tony is actively trying to befriend the horses he finds one day.

And there are two foals, so _of course_ he wants to befriend the horses. _Foals,_ man, they are hilarious! He bribes them with apples, and they come close enough for him to touch, though they remain alert and easily spooked by the monster, which, funnily enough, is spooked right back.

One day, Tony musters the courage to ask his butler to show him how to drive stick, and suddenly it's like he and Jarvis never had a falling out in the first place. It takes Tony a good while to manage it, because he knows all about wear of materials and stress and how it builds up until the pieces break and he keeps trying to optimize everything, from the timing of changing gears to the way he takes curves. But once he manages it, Jarvis lets him drive around alone in the evenings, when no one is working, so long as he does it inside the grounds.

The monster loves it, especially when Tony goes really fast. Or maybe it loves that _Tony_ loves it, because that would make more sense. Racing through the estate on unpaved roads is exhilarating, and the monster vibrates excitedly in time with Tony's pounding heart.

Speaking of the monster, it becomes more and more solid as days pass. Where before it was completely invisible, and then later became a slightly darker patch of air, now it's well and truly starting to _be there_. And though it looks like a half-translucent furry ball, it can still collapse on itself to hide in Tony's shadow—something which, now that it's visible, is something to behold.

But aside from its newfound visibility and the fact that Tony can touch it, the monster might as well not exist. Every sample Tony takes vanishes into smoke the second it's parted from the whole, and it doesn't show up in the x-ray machine at all. Tony might get better results if he tries to measure air.

It still scratches or bites Tony every now and then; mostly playfully or because it doesn't watch its own sharpness, but once in actual anger when Tony tries to take it into the pond with him for a swim.

All in all, once Tony accepts his fate and stops fighting the fact that he's stuck on a backward farm in the middle of nowhere, it starts being fun.

* * *

><p><em>Tony doesn't like the silence. He hasn't known silence since he was sixteen, and suddenly he's gone three weeks without Loki's constant companionship.<em>

_He stops hammering and turns around to look at his only friend in this place. "What?" he asks tiredly._

_"Jinn are beings of fire and air," Yinsen tells Tony, a smile playing on his lips. "It is no wonder he does not enjoy swimming."_

_Tony does a double take and laughs, "Loki is literally full of hot air!" He's too busy slapping the work table in mirth to mind the blowtorch in his hand._

_Yinsen quickly takes it from him and turns it off._

_It startles Tony sober. "No, wait, I need that!"_


	4. Chapter 4

_The arc reactor is working like magic. The constant weird sensation caused by the moving shrapnel is gone, leaving behind only the pain of the hot reactor casing pressing into his lungs and heart._

_"How are you feeling?" Yinsen asks, setting down a plate of grub in front of him._

_"Like shit," Tony replies, shrugging before he can remember that shrugging hurts. Everything hurts. "You fucked up. The thing is scraping against the bone." He taps the reactor and picks up the plate._

_Yinsen hums and looks to the door. "Must be the weather. My knees are aching too."_

_The weather. Like Tony's ribcage is going to feel it's made of bruises every time it rains and he should get used to it. _

_Yinsen starts eating. _

_The noise brings Tony to the present. To the plate of... lentil soup. Yum. He shovels some into his mouth and chews thoroughly, swallowing bit by bit so the mush won't get stuck in his displaced and narrowed esophagus. _

_"Did the qarin follow you home?" Yinsen asks, changing subject from pain to pleasure._

* * *

><p>The day comes when Tony has to pack his shit up because he's returning to college.<p>

Actually, he's returning to the mansion in NY first, because Maria, ever the dutiful loving mother, decided to take him shopping. She claims it's because he's grown so tall that all his pants are too short on him, which is true, but Tony knows it's actually because she feels guilty for having neglected him all summer. Which is a stupid thing to feel—especially considering he was purposely avoiding her, too—but hey, new clothes; he's not complaining.

Tony decides to leave all of his clothing except the favorites to the workers of the farm and their children, and instead use his suitcases to transport the monster, which has grown fat on Tony's emotions. (Seriously, it went from soccer-ball sized to beach-ball-sized in two months.) It takes him a while to get the monster into the suitcase, but he manages to do the zipper before going to bed.

o

The mansion is just as Tony left it at the end of last summer: big, over-decorated, and empty. He looks around, noticing the new paintings and decorations, and takes a good sniff of dry, perfectly conditioned air. He thinks, _I don't belong here_, which is strange, because if this is not home, then what is?

Whatever. He's only staying here for, like, four days before departing for college.

And the good thing is that here, at least, he can sneak the monster into Howard's workshop and finally do all the tests he's been wanting to try out without having to MacGyver his way through them. Heck, he may even get something out of the vanishing samples, now that he has a spectrometer on hand.

Immensely cheered up, he bounds up the stairs to his room and runs into his room.

It's just as he left it, except maybe a little cleaner. The same coverlet, the same rug on the floor, the shelves still lined with science fair trophies and action figures. The top of the desk is clear of notes and drafts and science magazines, just like he found it when he came back last summer. The suitcase with his precious new experiment is at the foot of his bed.

Tony ignores it in favor of nostalgia. He walks up to the desk and picks up a really banged-up Captain America figurine. "Hi, Steve-o," he tells it, extending its little blue arm up in a Nazi salute. It gives him the same sick sort of amusement as using it to 'pilot' the working plane models he built as a kid and making them crash into snow banks. He's never seen why his father was so enamored with the man that he chose going out to arctic expeditions over coming to Tony's award ceremonies.

Putting the figurine down on the shelf again, Tony sighs and picks up the suitcase.

He realizes something is wrong the moment he pulls up and the case takes off with no effort, nearly unbalancing him.

It's far too light.

When he opens it, heart in his throat, he finds it empty.

o

Tony searches every corner of his room for the monster, thinking it must have gotten out.

Under the bed, in the closet, in every drawer of his desk—nothing.

Then, remembering that the suitcase got there before him, he hypothesizes the monster went looking for him. He goes around the house like a madman, running from door to door and opening them violently.

Not in the bathroom. Not in his parent's room. Not in any guestroom. Not in the kitchen. Not in the workshop.

Desperate, grasping at straws, he runs to the garage and searches the car that Jarvis drove them from the airport in.

Nothing.

Tony slams the trunk closed and pants angrily. Where the fuck did it go?

Or better yet,_ why_? Why the _fuck_ did it feel the need to run out on Tony? Because, granted, Tony put him in a suitcase, but it's not like it needs to eat and breathe, and it was dark, just as it liked!

Tony punches the car with the side of his hand and stays like that for a second or two, curled into himself and trying to get his eyes to stop stinging.

"Sir?" a voice calls.

Tony startles and turns around to find the chauffeur. "Oh, it's you," he says, relieved that it wasn't Jarvis who caught him in that position. Then he does a double take.

Car. Chauffeur.

_Huh_.

"Hey, uh, Johnson, right?"

The man's brow knits. "James, actually, Mr. Stark." His voice lilts up at the end, like he's wanting to say _What do you want now?_ but is too polite or too scared Tony will get him fired.

Tony pats the car. "James. Take me to the airport. I left something on the plane." He can only hope the monster is there, scaring whoever's cleaning the baggage compartment, and not, say, back in the country house.

James look chagrinned. "It's my night off, Sir," he mumbles, and must actually really want to rest if he's disagreeing with his employer's son.

"Got a hot date, James?" Tony grins charmingly.

The man nods hopefully.

"Well, cancel it." Tony opens the door and plops into the backseat. "I'll make it worth your while." He pulls the door shut and puts his feet up on the passenger's backrest.

The chauffeur sighs dejectedly and gets in too.

o

The monster is not on the plane either.

Tony makes the driver take him to a jewelry store and choose something for his girl.

It turns out James's 'hot date' was actually with his mother, who'd come from far away—Tony forgot where the second he was told—to visit her only son. James tries to pick the least expensive necklace in the store, blushing and stammering, and Tony rolls his eyes, puts it aside, and tells him not to waste his time.

By the time they arrive back at the mansion, James has thanked Tony no less than fourteen times, each time as eager and earnest as the last, and Tony is so annoyed that gets out of the car by himself.

He doesn't get the gratitude. Right before he told the man to take him, he said he'd pay him well. James held up his side of the bargain, so Tony did the same. It was just business, not something he did out the goodness of his heart.

Whatever.

He doesn't get people. _I don't get monsters either, apparently,_ he thinks as he goes to his room and throws himself face-down on his bed. Because that one was another contract, so to speak. He kept it close and stopped taking heroin, feeding it all the emotions it could want, and in return the monster was his friend.

...Fuck, no, not _friend_.

Tony rolls on the bed until he's facing the ceiling. He feels cold and uncomfortable, and suddenly he realizes that he misses the monster's warm weight on his chest or the crook of his arm. He reminds himself that the monster is just a parasite that can get its fill of emotions anywhere it wants.

It doesn't need Tony. Not even a bit.

Tony hugs his pillow to his chest.

o o o

Maria takes him shopping.

It's something she does now and then, whenever she remembers that Tony is her son and that means they should have some sort of cordial relationship. In lieu of motherly love, which she's incapable of, she gives him the only thing she knows how to give: expensive presents. This is how she makes and keeps her friends, so why shouldn't it work for her son, right?

Well, Tony certainly isn't complaining. Leather jackets and Ray Bans last a lot longer than his mother's whims.

Besides, he's still angry (sad) about the monster disappearing on him (abandoning him), and he secretly enjoys having Maria's full attention on him, even if it's only to make sure he's coordinating his colors well.

After a full afternoon of shop-hopping, they still haven't fought—mostly due to Tony not wanting to put her off when she's finally noticing him—so they go to a restaurant. Maria lets him drink a Margarita despite the waitress giving them the stink-eye, and they decimate two bottles of wine during the meal. They have fun critiquing the food and publicly declare that they won't ever eat there again. Afterwards, when she excuses herself to "powder her nose," Tony leaves a hefty tip for the waitress they've tortured all night hidden between the folds of his napkin.

o

Next day, Maria is back to her normal self. Phoning friends, planning parties, the works.

Tony shrugs—can't say he didn't see it coming—and goes down to the garage to check if any of the cars need fixing, out of a lack of anything to do.

He passes the afternoon like that, trying to get Howard's favorite car to stop making those odd noises and finally succeeding well after dinner time. Of course, just as he's about to find the man and tell him to fire his usual mechanic—because how the hell does one forget to tighten the bolts _in the engine_?—Howard scolds him for being late to dinner.

Of course, Tony complains—how was he supposed to know they had guests, anyway, if no one bothered to tell him?—but Howard is too busy faking smiles at the DOD liaison and his wife to pay him any attention.

In the morning, when he learns that Obie Stane, his dad's business partner, called about some emergency or other, and Howard drove off in the middle of the night in that same car to deal with it, Tony thinks, _you're welcome, asshole, _and then gets a huge kick out of picturing Howard stuck in the middle of nowhere because the car broke down.

o

It turns out the so-called "emergency" was nothing out of the ordinary for a weapons factory, where there are a few little emergencies every day. Which means that Howard jumped out of bed and drove all the way there for nothing.

Tony chuckles darkly when he finds out.

Howard returns safely and cursing Obie for over-reacting. When Tony asks snidely that dinner if the car worked well, he watches Tony suspiciously and then asks if Tony touched his car.

Tony doesn't answer verbally, but the quirk of his mouth as it closes around his fork is answer enough.

Howard tells him (yells at him) never to "fucking touch my fucking car again, you ignorant child."

Knowing better than to talk back, Tony endures the berating in silence and asks to be excused as soon as at least half his food is in his stomach (wouldn't want Howard to accuse him of 'what are you now, a _pansy_ on a diet?' next). Well, 'asks' is a relative term: actually, he just arranges his cutlery parallel on the bottom of his plate and goes back to his room.

See if he ever fixes Howard car for him again.

Tony hopes he crashes next time. Serve him right.

o

Tony's black mood lasts for days. He keeps to his room, not wanting to see Howard, his mother, or Jarvis's eyes so full of pity and understanding.

The monster is stupid not to have come with him. It's missing the feast its stupid life-time.

_People are shit_, he decides, putting the monster in the same bag (because, why not? Some people are monsters; what's to say monsters can't be people too?). Inconstant, unpredictable, impossible to please or anticipate or _deal with_. They don't follow any rules at all. No wonder he can't relate to any of them! Even the so-called "social norms" are bullshit—Tony knows them back and forth, and yet he still manages to magically insult people or otherwise drive them away. His only friend in the whole world is actually Rhodey, who has shared (and probably will still share, this coming semester) a lot of Tony's classes; Tony is willing to bet that he only makes nice to keep him and his brain around. It wouldn't be the first time.

Evolution—or God, if he actually exists like Maria claims—is stupid and flawed. Its _creation_ is stupid and flawed. He can do much, much better, and it won't take him four billion years to get it right. In fact, if he times it well, he can make a thesis out of it and get invited to stay on as a grad student. Because, yeah, why not?

He's in need of company, and the current one he can find leaves much to be desired.

Why not make some from scratch?

o o o

Weekend comes and finds Tony's floor buried under balls of crushed scrap paper. He's drawing the first complete rough of the circuit board on his drafting board when someone knocks on his door.

It's Jarvis, all ready to carry Tony's bags down to the car that will take him to the airport.

Except Tony's been in the middle of a creative frenzy so _of_ _course_ he forgot to pack his bags.

Jarvis sees it in his face, apparently, because he sighs, rests his hand on Tony's hair, and comes in to help him pack.

Tony ends up with something like three suitcases, full to bursting. He's a bit amazed, really; he hadn't noticed Maria bought him so many new clothes. He's already dreading the part where he has to haul them up the stairs to his dorm room without help.

o

Tony has his own room in the university dorms. He'd wanted his own apartment, initially, since college students—even those at MIT—are loud or morons or sometimes both. Jarvis, concerned about Tony living alone so young and getting isolated from his intellectual peers (his literal words) had talked him out of it and convinced him to live in the dorms. The room has become pretty livable since he and Rhodey insulated the walls from outside noises, so Tony isn't really complaining (anymore). Besides, it means the commute to the labs is practically negligible.

The one downside is that there is no room-mate to help him haul the suitcases up to his room.

It doesn't matter. He has enough cash on him to bribe the taxi driver into playing bell boy. In fact, given the way the dude's eyes light up at receiving the hundred-dollar bill, one might think he wanted to do it again.

Whatever. Tony pays him and sends him on his way, making him leave the suitcases right outside the door. Once he disappears down the stairs, Tony steps into his room. He takes one deep breath and thinks, _home sweet home_, right before hauling his baggage in, dropping it untouched on his carpeted floor, and going back out to talk to the dean about his new thesis project.

Before he leaves, though, he checks under his bed.

Nothing there but dust and shadows.

o

The dean doesn't like Tony. In fact, key few people in the faculty and the administration like Tony.

It isn't that he's the son of Howard Stark. Not at all; in fact, that's the only thing that kept them from expelling him.

It's that he built a computer in his closet because the waiting time for the MIT computers was too long and then boasted to everyone that would listen that it was a million times better. It's that he manipulated the class records to put more girls in his classes and spends more time flirting with them than paying attention. It's that he never goes to the 'boring' classes that he only signs up for to fill his humanities credit requirements, yet somehow manages to pass the exams with flying colors. It's that he pranks everyone who makes a snide comment about the few black or female students, and no one can ever prove it's him even though everyone _knows._

But they put up with him because, well, sometimes he comes up with idea like _this_.

"An artificial intelligence?" the dean asks, pushing his glasses up his nose. His beady little eyes glitter; Tony is willing to bet that if it were anyone other than _Tony Stark_ sitting in front of him right now, he'd tell them to stop reading science fiction and get back to reality.

"Yeah," Tony replies, shrugging off-handedly where he's slumped in his chair. Like it's no big deal. "It'll be pretty basic, but I'm thinking… The four basic emotions, plus sensors and wheels, human shaped for convenience… That can fit into a handful of commercial processors. I'll just need to import RAM from Japan."

The dean—whose name Tony never bothered to learn and so simply calls him "dean"—presses his hands together, forming a steeple. "You understand that, since you're not a grad student, the university can't fund your research, correct?"

Tony fights the urge to roll his eyes. _That_ is a bold-faced lie, and they both know it. But they also know that Tony's monthly allowance is so much money that he could wipe his ass on Ben Franklin's reproachful face every time he takes a dump and still have enough left over to fund three projects _and_ buy his textbooks. "Yep. I'll pay for anything. I just need you guys to sign the orders."

Something that the dean is totally happy to do, provided Tony _behaves_. (Yeah, he says it like that, as if Tony might order a sample of smallpox, ten boxes of skin mags, or, God forbid, a_ heavy metal band_.)

They shake on it, trying to break each other's fingers. Tony lets go first because he's still a growing boy and therefore can't squeeze as hard, but he takes his revenge by saying casually, over his shoulder, as he leaves the office, "When I do this, I want a PhD."

"_If_ you do this," the dean arches a bushy eyebrow pointedly, "I'll hand you your diploma personally."

Tony smirks.

"As soon as you complete all your credits," the dean clarifies.

_Oh, it's on._

o

The first thing Tony does after that is look for Rhodey to share the news. When he doesn't find him, he checks with the registrar and learns that he isn't there yet.

Fine. Whatever.

He finds the next best thing: a party.

o o o

Next day, he wakes up around midday with a hangover. His head is pounding like an AC/DC concert, his mouth feels like he ate three bowls of raw sawdust, and his stomach is in the vicinity of his throat, ready to spew everything down to the last drop of bile.

Also, he can't breathe. He might as well have a ton of bricks sitting on his chest, for how hard it is to haul in air.

Which, now that his sluggish brain thinks about it, isn't a normal hangover symptom for him.

He groans and rolls sideways in the darkness, making it easier to breathe.

Next thing he knows, a furry snout is buried under his jaw, nuzzling his neck. A very familiar purring fills his ears.

He freezes. _Could it be…? _he wonders, slowly reaching up as if the monster might disappear again at any second. His hand curls over a furry head, and he feels tears pricking the corners of his eyes.

The monster snuggles closer, licking his ear and rubbing against him with its whole body.

Tony curls his arms around the little beast, pressing his face into the warm fuzz. "You fucker," he murmurs, his voice coming out thin and strangled. "I thought you had left." His monster smells like dust and it makes his nose itch, but he doesn't care. He's never letting it out of his grasp again.

The creature licks at his face like his tears are tasty, rumbling loudly.

_He doesn't like closed spaces._

The thought pops into Tony's head with all the force of an epiphany. "Oh, shit, you probably aren't used to being locked up, are you?" he asks, fingers sinking deeper into fur.

The monster bites his nose. The rumbling noise gets louder, like a motorbike approaching.

"Ouch, you fucker," Tony complains, half laughing, pushing it away. "Sorry, sorry, won't happen again."

The creature stands up on his arm with (_ow_) tiny feet that dig sharply into Tony's flesh and climbs him, using Tony's neck and face as (_ow ow ow_) footholds. It perches on his upper arm, apparently liking the high ground, and relaxes, spilling into the crooks of his neck like a mercury-filled balloon. A strand of monster flicks over Tony's ear before retreating, bringing snakes to mind.

Tony squirms a bit—it tickles—but doesn't otherwise move. He's just so happy to have the stupid monster back that his heart feels full to bursting. Actually, it's not just a feeling; his eyes are actually leaking. "Thought you'd left me," he confesses, cupping the thing's head—or possibly its butt, Tony never knows.

Whatever part of the monster it is, it rubs right up into his hand.

Right then and there, Tony is hit by the certainty that the monster will never leave him. He dries his face on his pillow—smiling as he cries, how stupid can his body be? "What took you so long?" he whispers, scratching the monster.

Its fur tangles under his fingernails, trapping them, and then wiggles around his fingertips like hair-thin little worms.

_He got lost,_ Tony realizes suddenly. He pictures a patch of darkness creeping through the countryside, terrorizing wildlife and children alike as it looks for him, and warmth suffuses his chest. He looks up at the fuzzy blob of now nearly opaque darkness and—

There's a glowing green eye watching him from a parting in the fur.

—he lets out a scream.

About ten or fifteen eyes pop open among the fur, swiveling around in alarm before focusing on Tony.

Finally remembering how to move, Tony chokes out "Gah!" and scrambles to get the_ fucking thing off him right now_. In his flailing, he loses his balance and falls off the bed. He lands on his ass and scuttles away from the bed like an undignified cockroach. Only when he hits the far wall does he dare look back.

There's nothing on the bed apart from mussed-up blankets.

Heart beating like two hundred times per minute, Tony gulps audibly and peers under the bed.

Five _glowing_ green eyes peer back at him from a corner.

One of them blinks.

A sixth eye opens lazily.

Taking deep breaths, Tony crawls towards the bed and hesitantly pokes his hand under it. "Sorry, you startled me," he says softly, his chest still feeling rather tight even though his heart rate is coming down a little.

The mass of black creeps closer, eyes disappearing and appearing at random all over its body. Most of them close as it rubs up against Tony's hand.

Gently, Tony coaxes it out from under the bed and onto his lap. "When did you get eyes, anyway?" he murmurs, scratching what he thinks is the monster's belly.

The monster doesn't answer, but the three eyes that are still open narrow in pleasure.

* * *

><p><em>"I hadn't taken you for an addict," Yinsen says after a moment of silence, picking up the plates and arranging them into a pile.<em>

_Tony rolls his eyes. "It was the eighties. Everyone and their mother did drugs." He would like some pot right about now, actually._

_Yinsen finally looks at him. "I did not mean the heroin."_

_Tony looks down at his hand. The fingers are full of scars, hidden among the calluses. There's nothing he can say to that._


	5. Chapter 5

_"Hey, Stark," Yinsen says one day, blowing sawdust off a wedge of wood he's whittling. "Guess what I'm making?"_

_Judging by shape and size of the wedges... "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say it was a crappy backgammon board."_

_"I'm impressed you even know what this is." Yinsen raises his eyebrows at him. "Tell you what. When I finish making this, I'll teach you how to play."_

_"That would be swell," Tony replies, putting down the blowtorch. "I'm a little rusty. I haven't played since—" he slides the goggles up his forehead, "—I was backgammon champ four years running back in MIT."_

_"Interesting," Yinsen says, carving out another sliver of wood. "I was the champ—at _Cambridge_."_

_Cambridge. Educated in the UK, after all._

_Tony shrugs. "Is that even a school?" he goads._

_"It's a university," Yinsen replies, face like that of a schoolteacher but voice full of laughter. "And you probably haven't heard of it because Americans can't get in, hmm?" He gives Tony a smarmy little smile._

_Tony plops down in front of him, matching his expression. "Unless you're teaching." He winks at Yinsen and picks up a piece of wood. "Hand me a knife."_

* * *

><p>A few days later, Tony hasn't stopped <em> needing<em> to be in contact with the monster every second of every minute, but he's feeling too cooped up in his room to stay in again. He comes up with a happy compromise: he'll go out _with_ the monster, but at night when there's little chance of running into people while carrying around a terrifying, creepy new life-form.

When night finally falls, Tony puts on a bulky jacket, stashes his friend under it, grabs his Walkman, and then proceeds to give the monster under his bed a tour of the campus.

He needn't have bothered with the large jacket—as soon as the creature is hidden by the shadows under it, it flattens out completely (in fact, if it weren't for the little claws Tony can feel hanging onto his shirt, he'd think the monster vanished again)—but he feel safer with it.

There must be parties going on somewhere, because the campus is deserted. The night is warm and insects are flying in circles around the lamp posts.

Tony clips the Walkman to his belt and plays Rhodey's mixtape as he walks, leaving the headphones around his neck rather than putting them on. He's not actually listening to it—he's heard all the songs (except one) enough times to know them by heart already—but he likes the thought of having a soundtrack to his life.

Besides, if the vibrations are any indication, the monster is quite enjoying the music.

o

After some half-hour of walking, he's too warm and decides to take a rest. He plops down on the grass, not really caring if he stains his new jeans, and watches the sky.

It's a clear night and many stars are visible, though not as many as can be seen from the farm.

Tony never cared much for astronomy, other than knowing that stars are nuclear fusion factories, and he can only recognize the Big Dipper. It doesn't matter; they are pretty enough. The grass tickles his neck pleasantly, and he feels content for the first time in a long whole.

The next song up is the one that starts with _I'm hot and, when I'm not, I'm cold as ice_. _Get outta my way, step aside or pay the price. _

Tony grimaces. He doesn't know the song's name, but he hates it_. _Rhodey picked it out for the mixtape because, according to him, it reminded him of Tony. Which _sucks_, because Tony's only ever been able to hear _HowardHowardHoward_ in the lyrics_. _Whenever the distinct chords sound, he always cringes and skips it, and this time is no exception. He slips his hand under his jacket to press _fast-forward_ and—

A hand covers his own, warm and fuzzy.

—he grins, closing his eyes.

They hold down the button together, and it feels strangely intimate.

When Tony presses _play_ again, he hears church bells and the tension melts from his frame. He bobs his head to the guitar and his foot to the drums, and sings along softly despite the fact that he can't actually hit the high-pitched notes unless he's screaming. At the words _if you like evil you're a friend of mine, _he turns his hand and curls his fingers gently around the thin shadowy ones_._

The monster rumbles contentedly.

o o o

Rhodey returns the day before the classes resume, cutting it _really_ close.

Tony understands—he didn't, at first, but it only took him like three days of walking to classes with him to learn—that Rhodey is uncomfortable with the stares and murmurs, and would rather not subject himself to them for any second longer than he has to, so he says nothing.

But thanks to this, they barely have time to catch up. Luckily, he's is in all of Tony's Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, and they make good use of that time. (It's not like the first week of classes counts, anyway.)

Tony, of course, says nothing about the monster, but he complains at length about the farmhouse and the slowness of country towns, right before seguing into gushing—for certain values of gushing, anyway—about the music Rhodey gave him.

Rhodey, for his part, has many hilarious anecdotes to tell Tony, one of them about his summer fling and another about his father, who can run circles around Howard when it comes to parenting.

Tony listens raptly while pretending not to care. He's actually loving this whole friendship thing.

The monster hidden under his shirt, apparently liking Rhodey a whole lot too, slides along Tony's waist in restless circles.

o

Tuesday arrives, bearing the wonderful gift of yet another mandatory-humanities-credit class for Tony.

He sleeps through his alarm and wakes up with a headache for no apparent reason. When he takes a shower, the water is cold, and he has to choose between breakfast and arriving on time for the class. Wanting to avoid making a bad first impression on yet another member of the faculty, he opts for skipping breakfast.

Bad idea.

The second he steps into his America in the Nuclear Age class—which he's only taking because, unlike the rest of the humanities, it's at least somewhat relevant to his life—and sees his professor, he turns around and walks back out.

Look, he didn't sign up for this class because he _wanted_ to. Whoever designed the curriculum decided he needed at least eight credits in humanities, arts or social sciences. All of which Tony _respects_, sure—okay, maybe psychology not so much—but the point is: he got into engineering for a _reason_.

Actually, no. The point here—the crucial point—is this:the professor of America in the Nuclear Age is the same one whose car Tony hotwired because Rhodey kept complaining about his snide comments.

And it was the _one_ thing Tony ever got caught doing.

Not smoking pot. Not 'liberating' computer parts from the lab to build his own. Not making unauthorized—and probably illegal—modifications to his dorm room's walls to make them soundproof.

He got caught stealing—and promptly crashing into the Charles River—the super-specialized car of a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran. The only reasons Tony wasn't expelled were a) his surname and b) the number of zeroes in his dad's bank statement.

(In his defense, he hadn't known about the man's disability when he did it, since he'd never even met the man and Rhodey had been too busy ranting about him to mention that oh, by the way, he's _paraplegic_. He'd just been seeing red because someone had dared to insult Rhodey—_his_ Rhodey, the only person aside from Jarvis that didn't frown or roll his eyes immediately upon spotting Tony.

And then, the cherry on top of the Fuck-You Sundae: Rhodey didn't talk to him for a whole month after that because, as he put it, "Just because I'm black doesn't mean I need a rich white boy to fight my fights, Stark."

Yeah. It had been a mess.)

So much for making a good first impression... But hey, at least now he has Tuesday and Thursday mornings free.

Which means he can use the time he would have wasted in military history to work on this secret project.

Grinning, Tony practically skips all the way to his room.

o o o

About two months into the term, Tony hits his first slump on his (now capitalized) Secret Project: as it turns out, making a roughly humanoid robotic friend that can process data like a living organism and react accordingly is _hard_.

Who would have guessed, right?

Well. Tony has a new appreciation for binocular vision and the processing capacity of the brain, that's for sure. He's going to have to let go of his grandiose dreams of building the first android—huge blow to his pride, right there. He'll have to downsize his ambitions to wheels rather than legs, one arm (hopefully he can still make it prehensile) and only one 'eye', and also limit the inputs to just visuals and audio—provided he can code voice recognition into the program.

It's a good thing he kept from bragging this time around, because now he needs to dump everything and start from scratch.

Thinking of all the time he wasted basically hitting his head against a wall leaves him in a bad mood, and he's so not ready to confront reality just yet, so he decides to do what he always does when in a bad mood: go out with his best friend and maybe even get laid.

Rhodey, despite having literally no knowledge of the Secret Project other than that it's Tony's PhD thesis, agrees to the outing. After a ten-minute-long discussion (Rhodey wants to go to the arcade, Tony to the bowling alley) and a coin toss (which Tony wins), they end up in the arcade anyway because _Gauntlet II just came out_ and Tony starts practically vibrating with excitement the second he finds out. It's the sequel to his favorite game _ever_, which came out just last year, but somehow he knows this one is even better.

And it _is_ even better. When it's finally their turn, he and Rhodey _own_ the game, playing together with the synchronization that only a year of close friendship can bring.

At one point in the middle of a stage, Tony feels a tap on his shoulder and thinks, _fucking newbies who can't even wait for their turn. _"Yeah?" he asks, not looking away from the screen.

"Can my friend and I play with you guys?" a feminine voice asks softly, barely audible over the combined game music.

Tony and Rhodey take one look at the girl and her friend—one dressed in pink and possessing a fantastic set of ta-tas, the other bottle-blonde and punk—and nod in unison.

o

The girls—Amanda ("Call me Mandy") and Rainbow ("My parents were hippies—_don't laugh_!")—turn out to be _excellent_ at Gauntlet II despite being girls. With Tony supplying an endless stream of tokens, they end up finishing the whole game together.

They chat a lot in the duration, despite the noisy atmosphere, and Tony finds himself discussing bands with Rainbow while the credits roll. Since he can tell that Rhodey is crushing _hard_ on Mandy and not just her huge assets (Tony thinks that Rhodey is about to go down on one knee and propose after she tells them she's majoring in Computer Science), he invites the girls to get a snack with them.

The idea of pizza sits well with all of them, and again Tony treats them. It's not like it's a chore—Rainbow's pretty fun, too, and he enjoys putting a smile on Rhodey's face.

So, there they are, waiting for their second round of drinks and their pizza to finally come to their table, when Tony catches himself watching Rainbow's lips as she talks. Particularly the pink, shiny insides where the dark red lipstick didn't, well, stick. Out of the blue, he thinks, _wonder if she'd leave a print around my cock if she blows me, _and blushes.

As if reading his mind, she runs the tip of her straw along her bottom lip, staining it dark red.

When Tony looks up, she's watching him right back, eyes crinkling at the corners. He's about to say something—whether to dispel the sudden tension or to make it tenser, he doesn't know—when the waitress puts the pizza down on the table between them.

"Oh, pizza!" Mandy whispers, excited, and proceeds to serve it.

_What a cockblock_, Tony thinks, shaking his head. As he passes Mandy his plate, he notices the waitress watching him with narrowed eyes. Wondering what he did _now_, he asks, "Do I have something on my face?" Then he turns towards his table companions with a mock-reproachful shake of his head. "Way to be a friend, you people. Why didn't you tell me?"

The girls giggle at this, Mandy covering her mouth delicately.

The waitress looks away hurriedly. "No, not really. It's just—you have a—a weird shadow."

A weird shadow.

The words hang in the air like a particularly foul fart and Tony panics because now that he checks, he can see it: his shadow's wobbly around the edges, like a candle-flame in very slight breeze, and—what the _fuck,_ are those _horns?_

As his mind reels, thinking up excuses to explain away the phenomenon, Rainbow puts on her excuse-me face and throws one elbow over the top of her backrest. "That's not a shadow. His name is Rhodey," she deadpans, waiting tongue-in-cheek for a response.

It takes Tony a second to understand what she's implying, and then he turns to look at the waitress innocently. "If you have a problem with black people…?" he trails off, still too out of it to manage an actual threat. His heart hasn't raced like this since the first time he discovered the monster living under his bed.

"Guys…" Rhodey mutters, and Tony feels vaguely like shit for using racism—an actual real problem that Rhodey suffers—just to shove everyone's attention off himself.

The waitress takes a step back, looking bashfully at the floor. Her hands are clenched into fists that go white at the knuckles. "There is no problem," she manages, before fleeing into the kitchen area.

His shadow _smirks—_an edged glint among the darkness, like a concealed knife—and Tony feels like punching the wall.

o

The rest of dinner is sadly uneventful.

"Sadly" because Tony wanted an excuse—any excuse—to go back to his room to scold his monster into next week. Instead, he gets to entertain Rainbow while Rhodey and Mandy fuck off on their own, probably to her room or something.

Yippy yay.

After giving Rainbow the obligatory tour, they end up in his room, lying side by side on his bed and sharing headphones as they listen to the latest Metallica album. Tony is too hyperaware of his shadow's edges dancing on the wall next to him to concentrate on conversation, and the song's lyrics—_twisting your mind and smashing your dreams; blinded by me, you can't see a thing_—really aren't helping his comfort situation.

Rainbow is nodding along to the bass guitar, despite having earlier expressed her disappointment that Tony didn't have any punk music, and the warmth of her body seeps through their clothes. She turns her head and asks, "Do you think they are fucking right now?" Her breath fans over Tony's jaw, tickling the hairs at the nape of his neck.

There's no need to ask who _they_ are. "Hmmm," Tony hums noncommittally, watching the monster rather than her.

The shadow smiles at him (or it that the light reflecting off his wristwatch?) and begins dripping—there's no other word for it—like hot wax into the space between the bed and the wall, completely disappearing from sight.

Just as Tony is relaxing, Rainbow announces, "Mandy's on the pill, so it'll be okay," and turns onto her side. She settles more comfortably into Tony, putting a hand on his forearm.

Tony feels a touch that can only come from the monster on his shoulder on his other side, pushing him towards the girl with tiny, poke-y hands. _It's okay, just go for it_, he thinks, swallowing hard. "You wanna fuck, too?" he finds himself asking, shifting so he's inclined towards her rather than the wall.

Rainbow shrugs and looks away. Then a smirk spreads slowly on her lips and she locks eyes with him again. "No. I want you to eat me out."

Tony blinks. He's never had a woman ask him to do that before, and the one time he offered he was refused. "Uh, I've never done it before, actually," he confesses, "so you'll have to be patient."

She smiles, and he smiles back.

He leans in for a kiss, and she pushes the headphones away receives him with parted lips.

They make out to the rhythm of the next song in the cassette, The Thing That Should Not Be, laughing at the creepy Lovecraftian lyrics before devolving into gasps and clutching hands. Then, as Welcome Home comes on, Tony pushes her back onto the bed and starts kissing down her chest, pulling up her t-shirt and nibbling at her ribs as he palms her breasts.

Her nipples are pierced.

_Bite them_, he thinks, and he congratulates his brain for the great idea as he proceeds to do exactly that, relishing the warmth of her skin and the softness of her moans. He feels a hand sinking into his hair, another clutch his shoulder, and another slipping in under his shirt, this one distinctively furry and tipped with claws. He shivers and dips his tongue into Rainbow's belly-button, making her laugh—making the monster buzz against his lower back.

_It likes this,_ he realizes as he blows air onto the wet spot. His cock is straining the front of his pants, and the low, rhythmical thrum of the music isn't helping his trance.

"My pants," she gasps, pulling hard on his hair, "take them off. Come on."

Tony opens his eyes and looks up at her, his mouth still glued to her lower belly, and can barely see her in the shadows that seem to cover far more of the room than they should by right. "'Kay," he manages, kneeling up and undoing the button and zipper.

She raises her hips off the bed and he pulls the pants down along with her panties.

A neatly trimmed brown bush of hair meets Tony's eyes. He forgets about the pants and presses his face to it, inhaling. She smells clean, clean and wet. When he dips a finger along the slit, it glides easily on her juices. "Mmmm, you're so wet," he murmurs, kissing the mound in worship. He can't wait to taste her properly.

Rainbow laughs in delight. "Get my shoes off first, stupid!" she giggles, squirming under him.

Tony laughs back and helps her take off one of her worn combat boots, figuring they don't actually need to take both off. As he takes the jeans off one of her legs, he catches sight of the monster crouching under the desk, or rather its eyes—just two this time—glowing like green will-o'-the-wisps among the darkness. It feels so _weird_ to have it watching him like tha—

_I wanna touch her, _he remembers suddenly_._

Oh.

Yes, that sounds good. Yeah, he's going to do that.

Tony looks back at his hookup, who is grinning up at him. "Ready?" he asks, spreading her legs and settling between them.

"Mmm," Rainbow answers, too busy licking her no-longer-dark-red lips to give a verbal answer.

Tony leans down and starts to lick.

Rainbow guides him through gasps and moans. She's full of instructions—suck this, nibble that, lick here, harder, no, softer—and she's unashamed, thrusting her hips up into Tony's face to get his tongue in deeper. It doesn't take too long, but his tongue and jaw are aching by the time she moans and spasms around his tongue, clutching his hair so hard she probably leaves a bald spot.

Tony, still sixteen, comes with in his pants with a shudder just from rubbing himself against the bed—and the relief after not even masturbating because of the monster's constant watchful presence nearly knocks him out. When he drags himself up to Rainbow's level and flops bonelessly down next to her, they're both hauling in breaths like they are hard to catch and harder to keep.

"How'd I do?" he pants, arm thrown over his eyes. His chin is coated in spit and other fluids, but he's warm enough not to care about the cooling patch.

She hums for a moment, sounding like she's really considering it. "I'd say B, but make that B+ for the effort."

Tony pauses briefly before getting the pillow and smacking her on the face.

o

Tony calls a cab for Rainbow. While they wait for it, she re-applies her lipstick and tells him names of bands he absolutely must listen to.

When she leaves, it's without writing down her phone number or any way to contact her.

Pity. She was fun.

Tony doesn't really mind. If there's one thing he's learned from life, is that people always leave. There's no point in getting attached.

Later, as he lies in bed trying to sleep, remembering the taste of her lipstick and the warmth of her laughter, he feels the monster creeping into bed with him. It slithers in under the blankets, curling into a furry ball at Tony's bare side.

_Here's one person who won't leave you,_ Tony thinks with a smile, curling around his monster and cradling it to his chest. A furry snout brushes against his face, tickling his lips, and Tony can't resist giving it a kiss.

He loves his monster dearly, especially now that he knows his sexcapades don't bother it.

Sometimes it feels like someone—a god, maybe—made this creature tailored just for him.

* * *

><p><em>"Yes," Yinsen says, "that is exactly it. That's what a quarin is."<em>

_Tony looks up from his carving. They almost have enough to make the board, by now. "What, like, my guardian angel?"_

_Yinsen snorts and blows sawdust everywhere. "Not remotely. Guardian demon, maybe."_

_Guardian_ demon.

_Tony smirks down at his slim wedge of cedar. That sounds about right. _


	6. Chapter 6

_Building a robotic exoskeleton while pretending to build a Jericho missile is tough._

_Tony knows he's being watched—knows the terrorists are watching them like he and Yinsen are a reality TV show; "Real Captives of Afghanistan," or something—because he's found the cameras. Rather than starting accidents to conveniently cover them, though, he works with them. _

_They actually make things easier. He's found two fridge-sized blind spots and he's stashing everything that doesn't look missile-like in there. In general, though, most of what he builds he puts into the missile shell, organized in such a way such that it looks as though it's part of an actual Jericho missile._

_The terrorists don't bother him about it. Well, he and Yinsen get visits from Abu Bakaar every other day, when he brings shit for Tony to fix—a set of walkie-talkies, once, or a fridge, or, one time, getting Tony out of the cell to fix a car that has been _shot at_—but other than that? No one is demanding they stick to any deadline._

_"I know what you're thinking," Yinsen says, assembling his backgammon board._

_"You do?" Tony asks, looking up from the pretend-circuit he's putting together for the reality show._

_Yinsen nods. "Abu Bakaar is a charismatic guy. You tend to forget that he is our captor and also in charge of this terrorist cell."_

_Stockholm Syndrome, helped along by natural leadership skills. Awesome combo._

_Tony puts down the tools and turns to face him. "I know all about having a silver-tongued devil sitting on your shoulder, believe me."_

* * *

><p>The midterm for America in the Nuclear Age is next week. Since the Secret Project is already on hold because Ton still can't bring himself to delete all the code and throw away the blueprints, he feel pretty confident that he'll have enough time to study.<p>

He buys the books and reads it in two days, then read it again, this time paying attention because it's actually pretty fascinating—not that he'll ever admit it unless his life depends on it, and even then it's touch and go.

When Thursday comes and he has to sit the test, he steps into the classroom for the first time since the semester started.

The professor, looking imposing despite being in a wheelchair, does a double take when he spots Tony, and Tony waves at him cheerfully, not even bothering to pretend he's sorry for not having attended class.

If Professor Fowler had wanted him to attend, he would have made it compulsory for passing the class. That's Tony's position and he's not changing it.

o

As it turns out, the America in the Nuclear Age professor is one of those assholes who don't test on the assigned reading. He tests on _what he says_ _in class._

Tony discovers this the second he turns his exam paper around and reads the only question:

_You are in the President's Cabinet meetings in July 1965. You have listened closely to the debates about whether to escalate America's commitment in Vietnam. You have considered both the benefits and risks of taking further action. At a key impasse, President Johnson turns to you to ask you what should be done. You say . . ._

_In formulating your response, consider the following questions (as well as any others you think are pertinent):_

_Why is the US in Vietnam in the first place?__What are America's goals in Vietnam?__Are those goals attainable?__Why or why not?__What are the costs of inaction?__What are the costs of further action?__What steps exactly ought to be taken?__What factors must the President consider in making his decision?__What are the US obligations in this region?__Are there national security issues at stake?__What authority must Johnson seek to pursue the plans you suggest?__How has the President justified his actions thus far?_

Tony's eyes widen and he blinks exactly once. Because, _what the actual fuck_. Sure, the Vietnam War was covered in the textbooks, extensively so. He can tell you anything about what happened, as far as facts go, but this? This is not an essay about the facts. This is an essay of _opinion_, and the only way to know which way he should lean to pass the test—Tony doesn't think that remaining impartial counts as deciding "what should be done"—is knowing the professor's own opinion beforehand.

Tony gapes at the question a little longer and then shakes himself out of his stupor. Okay, he can do this. He takes a look at Professor Fowler, examining the wheelchair and his face, trying to decide by his look alone if _he_ would have voted to take further action in Vietnam in 1965 or if he'd have voted to retreat—if he hates the war that crippled him or if he's bitter he couldn't go back to finish it.

As if reading his mind, Fowler looks up and catches him staring. He glares at Tony, his jaw clenched bitterly.

Tony lowers his eyes back to the page and picks up his pen. _He misses it_, he decides immediately, and writes with confidence:

_Taking everything into consideration, it would be recommendable to take further action, as I will show below…_

o

He gets a C. A fucking _C._

Well, technically C+, but still: the last time Tony Stark got anything below A- was in art class in middle school, when one of the kids—older than him by two years—spilled their shared reservoir of rinsing water all over Tony's project "accidentally" because he didn't like how straight Tony's lines were.

When Fowler gives him the grade, he tells him that he "did a good job on the facts" but his interpretation "leaves much to be desired, I'm afraid."

In other words: _you didn't come to class so you didn't parrot what I think, but your facts are too sound for me to fail you._

In other words: Tony chose fucking _wrong._

Tony merely shrugs and sticks his headphones on—even though there's no music playing because he forgot to change the batteries—before stalking off to his room. He slams the door and throws his backpack into the wall. Grumbling and muttering under his breath about unfair assholes, he drops down onto his knees by the bed and digs around under it. When his hand finally collides with the monster, he grabs it and pulls it out.

The monster resists, of course, digging its claws into the cheap carpeting. They are too sharp for it to find proper purchase, however, and they merely gouge tears into it as Tony pulls it out.

After much battle, Tony manages to coax the wildly squirming creature into his lap and curls into a ball, cutting off all of its escape lines. He immediately buries his face into the fur, drying his tears in the monster's warmth.

The monster, for its part, stops squirming the second it understands what's going on. Instead of trying to get free, it relaxes like a punctured beach ball and oozes up Tony's shoulders on either side, closing over his back.

Tony sighs deeply, already feeling better. There are many benefits to having a soul-sucking creature for a pet and/or best friend, but this perk is the best: he never stays sad or angry. He just needs to let the monster close for long enough to eat those emotions and they simply _go away. _

Like heroin without the comedown.

"I hate that guy," he murmurs, eyes closed. He can feel the monster inflating and deflating as it breathes, or does whatever monsters do. There is no heartbeat, but he's used to that.

_I'll destroy him_, he thinks, anger burning in the pit of his stomach. Yeah, he's gonna take revenge. Fucking teachers expecting students to fucking memorize their classes. Expecting you to attend but not telling you to. Tricking you into thinking you can study on your own and then revealing that nope, books and research don't matter, only _their opinion_ matters.

_I should pet the monster, _his brain adds suddenly, and _oh,_ Tony hadn't even noticed he wasn't doing it. "Sorry for that," he murmurs, starting the slow strokes he always gives the monster without having to think about it.

The monster snuggles up into him, forgiving and comforting, and sticks its nose into Tony's neck.

Tony kisses it, tightening his arms so they are even closer together, and the thought that he really, _really_ loves the monster crosses his mind.

Suddenly, velvety lips are kissing his neck right where the monster is.

It feels good. Very good, actually, especially when Tony realizes that the monster is imitating him. _He loves me too_, he thinks with a tiny smile, stroking the creature's back as he realizes just how much the monster has changed for him in the past few months. It went from being invisible to being a shapeless blob of darkness and then to having eyes and hands and a mouth and a head. Copying Tony to relate better to him.

_Bitchin'._

The monster squirms in his arms until Tony loosens his grasp and then it shrinks, returning to its usual lizard-like shape. It climbs onto his shoulder with sharp claws, and Tony lets it, not wanting the tiny knives to bite into his flesh more than they have to. It circles his neck—bringing to mind a wolf turning in its place before resting—and then drapes itself along his shoulders like a comforting hug, nuzzling his cheek.

Tony smiles softly.

Yeah, he loves his monster very much.

o o o

Tony makes the most of the two months left until finals and The Great Revenge.

Instead of bowing his head and going to the America in the Nuclear Age classes, he attacks the Secret Project with new vigor and starts making slow but steady progress. He doesn't feel the acute need to make himself a friend from scratch anymore, since the monster under his bed is still around and clingier than ever, but he wants to show the stupid bald dean than he _can_ make an artificial intelligence happen. Besides, he likes the idea being first to the finish line of the technological race.

Rainbow takes him a punk music concert and she sucks him off afterwards to repay the favor, but she seems uninterested in pursuing a relationship, unlike her friend Amanda. Tony doesn't mind—he saw it coming a mile away—and he sets her up with the nice guy that mans the espresso machines in his favorite coffee shop. Secretly, he hopes for a threesome, but it doesn't happen.

What does happen, strangely, is that girls are paying attention to him now. It's not that he's grown up a lot in two months, and he can't quite put his finger on what actually _is _the cause; it certainly isn't the moustache that he tries to grow but then shaves off in disgust because it looks like a tricycle skid-mark. His sex life is better than anyone else's on campus, despite the live-in voyeur popping up now and then to loom darkly over him and his date—something that, incidentally, no has commented on yet.

Tony's too busy enjoying sex every weekend—sometimes even with repeat people, and isn't _that_ a novelty?—to look deeper.

The monster, for his part, grows fat on Tony's orgasms, so it certainly isn't complaining either. In fact, it always snuggles with Tony on the bed after the hookup leaves, something it doesn't usually do otherwise. (Even if Tony hugs it when he lies down, it only stays a few moments before scurrying back to under the bed.)

It likes Tony having sex so much that it actually accompanies him on outings, sometimes hidden in his shadow and sometimes under his jacket, and plays wingman more effectively than Rhodey ever has. Whenever Tony wants to chat someone up, he simply points and the monster takes the form of a cat or a raven or some black animal, and lures their companion away by various means (like stealing their jackets, tripping them, biting invisibly at their ankles), thus paving the way for Tony's grand entrance.

The system works, and Tony teaches the little critter to bump fists just so they can celebrate.

o

A week before finals, Tony enacts his Great Revenge: steal the America in the Nuclear Age paper and distribute it to _everyone _in the class.

In the middle of the night, he sneaks into Fowler's office with just the monster's help, since its shape-shifting abilities are ridiculously handy when it comes to picking a lock or creating distractions.

The creature, for its part, is abuzz with excitement—probably second-hand, since Tony's riding an adrenaline wave a mile high—and keeps climbing Tony in spirals like an oversized squirrel. Every time Tony get tired of the pinpricks of pain all over his body and puts it down on the floor, it simply jumps back on and flicks its thin forked tongue into his ear.

Tony looks through the desk with just the light from the monster's glowing green eyes—just three, since it's a stealth mission—to guide him.

Then he looks through the locked drawers.

Then through the cabinets.

Then the books in the shelves.

Annoyed, he kicks the metal waste basket and sends it flying into the wall.

The monster quickly pounces on it, mangling it beyond recognition with blood-curdling screeches.

Yeah, Tony can feel its frustration, alright.

Then it dawns on him: of _course_ the professor wouldn't leave the test in his office. He probably has it in his house. Heck, Fowler's an ex-marine, so he probably_ is_ paranoid enough to keep it in his _briefcase._

_I can't do this_, Tony thinks bitterly, dropping down in the leather chair with a huff and putting his feet up on the desk. Sneaking around the university is one thing; stalking the professor to find out where he lives and then breaking and entering and riffling through his furniture?

Entirely different.

_I'm going to fail, aren't I?_ he thinks with a pained moan, slouching further down the chair. He's never failed a class before, but he can already imagine Howard's face when he learns of this. _He never cares, never, until I fuck up._

Something bumps his hand, and Tony looks down to see the monster rubbing its scaly head into his palm.

He can't help it; he smiles fondly and gives the creature the head scratches it's asking for. Whatever happens, he has _this_—a partner in crime that consoles him when he fucks up.

_Copy center_, he thinks abruptly, sitting up.

Maybe—it's a weak possibility, but still—_maybe_ Fowler left his test in the queue to be Xeroxed. Tony doesn't know the backstage of MIT, but he remembers high school and being sent on errands by teachers who thought he was trustworthy because he was thirteen in a class of eighteen-year-olds; errands to fetch a stack of copies from the copy center.

He jumps to his feet, ready to run out the door—

The monster perches on the desk and throws its head back, somehow managing to convey to Tony that he should look around the room.

He does, and promptly winces.

They've made quite a mess in their search.

_We should leave it like this, _Tony thinks, watching the monster watch him. He shakes his head because no, bad idea—Fowler would know that someone went through his shit, would guess what for, would change the exam questions.

The monster tilts its head slightly, and its luminous eyes seem to swirl.

_It would serve him right, though_, Tony's mind adds viciously; just his id talking again. _It would defeat the purpose of sneaking_, he tells it firmly.

With a sigh, he begins tidying up.

o

After that ordeal, sneaking into the copy room is comparatively anti-climactic.

The military history test turns out to be there—and within easy reach, too. Actually, it's with the rest of the finals, sitting in a pile just there in a shelf, because apparently no one bothered to teach the copier clerks about security.

Tony gets to see the finals for at least three different physics classes, all of which he's already passed ages ago, and they are so easy that he solves them in his head while figuring out the Xerox machine. When he manages to start it, he only makes copies of the America in the Nuclear Age test—even cheaters have some morals; after all, he's doing this _for a cause_—and then leaves.

He makes sure the monster locks the door behind them.

o

Tony doesn't hand out the copies himself, he's not stupid. Doing that would only end up in people pointing fingers at him.

This is one of the moments when having the phone numbers of the MIT's mainframes—he procured them before the end of his first week there—finally comes in handy. Computer hacking just to access a file is not illegal in Massachusetts and, since doing it to his university mainframe doesn't involve interstate commerce, there is no federal jurisdiction—he's done his research. That's the cherry on the sundae: he's not breaking any actual laws when he opens the student database, looks for the people enrolled in his military history class, and writes down their addresses.

Sure, it takes him two hours to manually sift through the data—he can't copy the file or modify the original if he wants to do things legally—and he can barely open his eyes for how much they hurt afterwards, but now he can deliver the copies of the test anonymously.

It's nearly dawn by the time he's done, so he decides to call it a night and deliver the papers tomorrow.

o o o

The Great Revenge goes off without a hitch, judging by the grins of every single person sitting the test. Whatever happens next—whether everyone gets A, or whether they have to re-take the class and Tony is found out—will only happen in about four weeks, when the grades are sent out. Until then, Tony is free.

When he gets back to Stark Manor for the winter holidays, he drops down on his bed and stares at the ceiling. _It was a stupid thing to do_, he thinks, suddenly wondering what he was thinking.

If he gets found out and expelled, not even Howard and his horde of lawyers will keep it a secret. People will find out. People will know Tony as the guy who threw a tantrum over getting a C in a midterm, and they will have one more thing to judge him on.

He sighs. He hopes the monster will get there soon. It refused point-blank to go into a suitcase, carrier, or even travel under Tony's clothes, and Tony can't understand what it is about planes that terrifies it so much. But whatever; he knows the monster will return by its mysterious means.

Until then, he'll have to make do all alone.

It will come. It _will_.

Tony tells himself that again and again.

o

The monster arrives four days later, silent as a shadow. One moment there's nothing—

Tony presses the heels of his hands into his eyes; they hurt after staying awake so long working on the Secret Project designs.

—and the next, there it is, on his desk in front of him: a cast iron statuette set with glowing emerald eyes, sitting on his desk with its bushy tail curled around its delicate paws.

Tony's heart forgets how to beat for a second, and then he blinks again, exhales, and grins. "You took your sweet time, you fucker," he greets it, reaching up to stroke the furry head, between the horns.

The monster's eyes narrow in pleasure, and it pushes against Tony's fingers eagerly, seeking more contact.

Still smiling like an idiot, Tony coaxes it half onto his lap and runs his hand down its back, enjoying the creature's enjoyment. His chest feels full to bursting and his eyes sting; he missed the thing, the silly creature who climbs him like a tree and nibbles on his ears, who purrs against his chest until he falls asleep and is always, always next to him like a second shadow.

Apparently feeling the same, the monster finishes climbing onto his thighs and puts its front paws on Tony's chest, reaching up to lick at his mouth with a scaly tongue.

Tony laughs and turns his head, playfully pushing it away, and it turns into a battle of _lick-lick-lick _versus _no-haha-stop-yuck_ that ends up with the chair tipping backwards.

Chair, Tony, monster, and rough blueprints all fall to the floor, and Tony can only hug the stupid creature to his chest and smile, smile, smile.

* * *

><p><em>Tony becomes silent, a fond smile playing on his lips.<em>

_Yinsen throws a shard of Lebanese cedar at his head—a piece that broke when he was molding it, rotten inside—to get his attention._

_It lodges itself in Tony's hair, which is matted and overgrown._

_Tony startles back to reality. "Huh?" he grunts, reaching up to get the wood. "What is it?"_

_"You realize that the jinni used your affections against you, right?" Yinsen asks. "He was being cute on purpose, to endear himself to you."_

_"Ha!" Tony exclaims, grinning. "You thought he's cute, just now. Admit it!" He throws the shard back at Yinsen._

_Yinsen dodges, glaring briefly at him._


	7. Chapter 7

_Abu Bakaar stomps in suddenly one morning, making like a hurricane—speaking loudly and generally ruining what little peace they can find in their cell. He drops a veritable pile of dirty clothes right onto Tony's lap and barks out something in Pashto before fucking off._

_"Lemme guess," Tony says before Yinsen can translate, "he said to wash the clothes." He holds up a pair of very used underpants, probably once white but now a pale yellow-gray._

_Kidnapped, taken to a cave in Afghanistan, made to do the laundry. _

_How is this Tony's life?_

_o o o_

_Moments later, when Tony is done loading the washing machine, they settle down for a game of backgammon on their new handmade board. Tony checks the breakfast teapot while Yinsen sets the board._

_"You still haven't told me where you're from," Tony says, pouring tea for the both of them._

_"I'm from a small town called Gulmira," Yinsen replies, sounding tired. He makes his move. "It actually was a nice place, before these guys destroyed it." _

_'With my weapons,' Tony adds in his head. He hands a mug of tea to his friend, who takes it gratefully, and makes his move. "Got a family?"_

_"Yes," Yinsen smiles sadly, looking down at the board, considering it. "And I will see them when I leave here." He lifts his eyes to look at Tony. "And you, Stark? Have you got a family?"_

* * *

><p>Christmas, aside from the staple Stark charity gala, is a non-event.<p>

For all presents, Tony gets:

to sleep with Merry, a girl he meets at the galathe dubious pleasure of being kicked out by her father the next morninga white dove that the monster leaves on his pillow, bloody around the neck

That's it. Maria doesn't even try, Howard has never tried in the first place, and Jarvis has the day off.

Bored out of his skull and frustrated with the fact that he must come back here at all, he gets his fake ID and the monster and goes out of the house, preferring to kill time in an arcade or the library than at his house.

When he returns at dawn—still tipsy after sampling the New York City nightlife thanks to his trusty fake ID—and goes straight to the kitchen for a snack before bed, he finds Jarvis already there, kneading some dough. It's not like his butler doesn't know about the weird hours he keeps, so Tony simply walks in and greets him cheerfully. "Hi, Jarvis, good morning! What are you making there?"

Jarvis doesn't bat an eye, well used to his young master's nosiness, but he does abandon his dough. "Croissants stuffed with cheese and ham," he replies obligingly as he wipes his hands on his apron. "They will not be ready for another hour. Shall I make you an omelet, Young Master?"

Tony grins. "Most definitely! Your omelets kick ass." He's a little dizzy from drinking and he needs to sit down, but he doesn't like the idea of going to the dining room while Jarvis is cooking exclusively for him. Given that there are no chairs in the kitchen, he hops up onto the counter and watches Jarvis go back and forth, silently waiting for the interrogation that's sure to come.

But instead of asking where Tony's been all night, if he had fun, if he took anything he shouldn't have, and the usual questions, Jarvis merely retreats into the servants' quarters, leaving Tony all alone.

Huh.

Staring at the door Jarvis just disappeared into, Tony tilts his head and wonders what's wrong with his butler. Has he finally given up on Tony? It wouldn't surprise him… He resolves to tell him "Merry Christmas" when he returns and, sighing, returns his eyes to the abandoned dough. _Wonder what it feels like?_

Suddenly the monster is there on the counter, sniffing around the dough.

Tony's eyes widen and he freezes, not sure what to do. If he shouts at the creature, Jarvis will hear; if he moves to shoo it away, he risks startling it into kicking everything off the counter. Caught in indecision, he can only stare, cold sweat forming on the back of his neck, as the monster presses a paw into the dough—watching him smugly the whole time, too, the little vandal.

A colorful block pushing into his stomach interrupts his panicked stupor.

He jumps about a foot in the air, instinctively grabbing the thing as he looks wildly around. He spots Jarvis on his left, watching him with kind eyes and a politely restrained smile, and relaxes. The butler looks down at Tony's lap meaningfully, and Tony follows his gaze to the thing—the parcel, neatly wrapped in a wintery print and tied with a simple black bow.

A present. Jarvis got him a _present_.

It takes Tony a few moments to process that, and then he looks back up at Jarvis. He thinks of what to say—_you shouldn't have _or_ I didn't get you anything_ or_ I don't deserve this_—but the only thing that comes out is a little croaky, "Why?" as his eyes start to burn.

"Merry Christmas, Tony," Jarvis replies, a small smile playing on his thin lips.

Throat tight, Tony blinks several times in an attempt to hold back the tears. It works, somewhat, and he dips his head so Jarvis won't see just how rattled he is.

Jarvis pats him on the shoulder, fatherly, and then goes to the fridge to fetch ingredients for Tony's omelet. Then he starts preparing it, completely ignoring the unfinished croissants that will become Howard and Maria's breakfast—like feeding Tony is more important right now.

A scaly snout nudges his hand aside, and Tony looks down to see the monster—when did it get here?—examining the present. When it looks up at him, he thinks, _I should probably open this_, and swallows.

Yeah, that.

Present.

Waving the monster aside, Tony starts peeling the wrapping paper off the present. He does this carefully, all gentle, deliberate motions. He avoids tearing the paper as he removes it—not because he wants to keep it, but so the noise won't bother Jarvis—and sets it aside neatly folded. When he's done, he has on his lap a sturdy leather case with a zipper. Wondering what the hell could be in it, he opens the zipper.

The monster promptly sticks its curious head into the opening and _disappears_ into the darkness inside.

Rolling his eyes, Tony finishes opening the case and looks inside. He sees two straight razors with mother-of-pearl handles strapped to the underside of the lid, a stiff brush, a little metal bowl, a leather strap with a metal clip on one end curled in on itself, a brand new bar that reads "beer soap" on the label, two half-finished metal tubes about the size of his thumb, and a bottle of aftershave of a brand he recognizes because it's the same Howard uses.

A shaving kit.

And, judging by the _E.A.J. _carved into the handles of the razors and the brush, it's _Jarvis's_ shaving kit.

Suddenly, Tony feels like he's four again, like the newly hired butler—tall and elegant and broad-shouldered and impeccably dressed—is kneeling on the grass in front of him, tying his shoelaces without even pausing to consider that maybe the kid already knows how to do it, maybe the kid has known how to do it since he was three and his nanny told him to do it himself.

"Jarvis?" he asks weakly. He doesn't know how to say it—_what is this, please explain, why are you giving me your stuff, are you dying, what are these feelings—_but the tone of his voice says it all. His hands are shaking a bit.

"Young Master," Jarvis replies, setting down a perfectly golden omelet next to Tony and taking the shaving kit from him. "I thought it might be time to give this to you. You are about to become a man and it may happen while you're away at college." _It may happen while I'm not there for you._

Tony's still feeling like there's a fist around his neck, but he manages to squeeze out, "But—but this is yours!"

Jarvis smiles softly and takes a razor out from its straps. "It was given to me by my mother when I started shaving. It was my grandfather's, whom I was named after." He thumbs the back of the mother-of-pearl handle absently. "And since you're the closest I have to a son, Tony, I'm giving it to you." He puts the razor in Tony's slack hand.

It closes around the razor reflexively, but Tony doesn't even notice. His brain is stuck on the obvious deduction that Jarvis is the son of a single mother, but his heart is stuck on _son. _This—this is too much. The thought _has_ occurred to him before, that Jarvis might love him for real and not just pretend to because of who pays his salary, but he's never listened to it. And now that affection, that care, that worrying, those pieces of advice, culminate in_ this_, in _you're the closest thing I have to a son._

And Jarvis is the closest thing Tony has to a father, whatever his birth certificate says.

_Hug him, idiot,_ he thinks, _don't let him think you don't care_.

And Tony does. He lets himself fall forward and rests his forehead on his butler's shoulder, now less broad than it was ten years ago. The monster, sitting behind Tony and out of sight, nudges his elbow, and Tony's hand comes up to clutch at Jarvis's back.

Jarvis rests his old, strong, calloused hand on Tony's shaking shoulder. "I'll show you how to use it."

The monster rubs against Tony from behind, pushing him further into Jarvis, and Tony melts into him. "Thanks," he whispers, and his tears overflow despite his efforts, soaking the soft fabric of the charcoal gray waistcoat.

o

A few days later, they learn from a gossip rag that the girl Tony hooked up with at the charity gala is actually Meredith McCall, daughter of Creighton McCall, who, in turn, is Howard's arch-rival and number one competitor. Howard sits Tony down to "talk", and it goes as per the usual script:

**HOWARD (Cont.)**

**Women will sleep with you for my money or my company.**

**(HOWARD looms over TONY,**

**hands on either side of him.)**

**Don't be so stupid, Boy. You have to watch out.**

**TONY**

**Bite me.**

**(TONY pushes HOWARD away**

**and leaves without looking**

**back.)**

The next morning, Howard grounds Tony for supposedly shredding his best suits just before an important business meeting.

When Tony returns to his room and slams the door shut, he finds the monster sitting on his pillow, picking bits of thread and fine Italian wool from between its teeth. Snarling, he throws the pillow to the floor (monster included), sits on his bed, and jams the headphones on at max volume. Later, when the monster tentatively climbs onto his stomach, Tony lasts all of one song before petting it.

Just another day in the life of Howard Stark's son—or, as Rhodey would call it, "situation normal, all fucked up."

o

The winter break is otherwise uneventful, and Tony spends most of his time on his Secret Project—drafting, programming, and deciding on a name for the robot prototype, which turns out to be harder than he expected.

The letter with the semester's grades arrives at his house about a week before he's due to leave, and he opens it with trepidation, half expecting to find out he's been expelled.

It's all As, seven beautiful hundred-percents—until he gets to the single blight in his academic career:

**_21H.131 America in the Nuclear Age..._ _B+_**

This means he got full marks in the final—which tastes like vindication—and he's got enough As in the rest of this classes that his GPA will still be nominally 4. High enough to get him Summa Cum Laude if the MIT were the sort of university to subscribe to such nonsense.

Smiling perversely, Tony gives the letter to his monster and strokes its belly absently as it chews it up.

o o o

The first thing Tony does upon setting foot back on MIT is drop his suitcase in his room.

The second thing he does is gather up his blueprints and go straight to the robotics lab. He'll be graduating this semester, and he needs to start really working on DUM-C—he left DUM-B behind at Stark Manor, and DUM-A is the prototype-that-never-was—in earnest. Besides, the monster will take some time to arrive, and he doesn't feel like dealing with people until then.

The third thing he does is get called into the dean's office, and it happens before he's even taken the blueprints out of the carrying tube.

* * *

><p><em>Story time gets interrupted by Abu stomping in all over again. He shouts at Tony like a taxi-driver cheated out of his fare, not even giving Yinsen time to translate. "When, when, when?" he demands agitatedly in English. "When finish?"<em>

_"Finished," Tony cuts in, finally managing to get word in edgewise. "Ready."_

_Abu freezes, hands still spread from when he was using them to gesticulate wildly. He turns toward Yinsen, obviously wanting an explanation._

_Yinsen nods his confirmation._

_"There." Tony points at the neat pile of folded clothes sitting atop the washing machine, and Yinsen repeats the word in whatever language Bakaar speaks._

_Abu walks over to them and picks them up, only to start yelling complaints again. This time, it's because he thinks Tony washed the colors with the whites._

_Tony and Yinsen share a look and a sigh, and Tony explains that no, he didn't, in fact, wash them together, he just folded them together. (And getting the "whites" back to a color that could actually be considered white was an ordeal.)_

_Mollified, Abu grunts at Tony one last time before turning to leave, clean clothes in hand._

_He's promptly shot in the head by his second in command, Raza._

_The image of red chunks staining the pristine whites he'd folded so carefully will be forever seared into Tony's retinas._

_"You have one week," Raza informs them, no trace of Abu's smile on his face._


	8. Chapter 8

_The lazy days of sewing the emperor a set of invisible clothes are over. There is always someone with them now, except when it's bedtime, and then they are locked out of the workshop._

_The only privacy they have is then. They can't even talk about the suit of armor, since Raza—probably his henchmen, too—understands English, and the only other language they have in common is French, which would sound mightily suspicious anyway._

_But it's not the first time Tony has had to pretend to do something while in fact doing the opposite. They can manage._

_Meanwhile, they have to pass the time somehow, and the Ten Rings have confiscated their backgammon board._

_"Did they find you out, Stark?" Yinsen asks when they are both in their cots, staring up at the ceiling of the cave. "At your school, I mean."_

_"The thing about the test?" Tony tries to think back to where he cut off, but all he can remember is the crack of the bullet shattering Abu's skull, and the thud of his body collapsing on the floor. "Well, yeah. Fowler knew I'd done it."_

* * *

><p>Tony dries his hands by rubbing them over his jeans before knocking on the heavy door.<p>

The murmurs on the other side cease, and a few moments later the door opens. The dean looks him up and down and then, unimpressed, says in his grating nasal voice, "Come in, Mr. Stark."

_'Mr. Stark' is my father,_ Tony grumbles internally as he steps inside. The next thought is _also, he sounds like a car horn_, and it's so incongruous with the situation that he finds his lips twitching. Until he sees who else is inside the office.

Professor Fowler, sitting like a pile of forgotten flour sacks in his wheelchair.

Tony stops cold for half a second, his brain firing on all cylinders—

_Fowler knows_

_Fowler has enough evidence_

_they're going to expel me_

_I'll have to slink back to Howard and bare my neck to him_

_where the _fuck_ is that stupid monster_

—before he reins it in with a mental scream of _Stark men are made of iron! Show no weakness! _He schools his expression into the easy smile he reserves for the press and for people who only talk to him to ask him about his dad. _I can do this,_ he tells himself, and his eyes focus.

The dean is looking at him expectantly, gesturing at one of the chairs; Fowler is giving him the stink-eye, looking like an angry bulldog.

_I can do this_, Tony repeats, trying to act casual as he sits down. He makes a show of being relaxed—leaning back and spreading his legs, confident, _show no weakness, boy—_as he asks, "What did you want? Make it snappy, I got places to be."

"See?" Fowler growls, balling up his fists with barely restrained fury, and yeah, _bulldog_ is the right word. "The boy has no respect for us _or_ this institution."

Tony drums his fingers in the exact same way Howard does when he's hearing a particularly boring quarterly report. "_The boy _is sitting right here," he deadpans, heart secretly racing so fast he can hear the rush of blood in his ears. "If you feel like I don't respect you, then I'm terribly sorry—you're right."

Fowler sputters, his face turning red, and the dean narrows his eyes at Tony, almost challenging: _keep talking shit, kid, just do it_.

Right now, despite being so nervous he's feeling like he's swallowed a spoonful of lava, Tony finds himself wishing he had some gum to pop in their faces. Hell, if he's going down, he's going down with style—also, he wants to see just how red Fowler's face can get before he gets a stroke. "Sooo. What's up?"

The dean takes a calming breath. "Mr. Stark. _Tony_," he starts, and that name has never sounded so much like an oil stain, "I called you here today because something… _strange_ happened with Professor Fowler's course last semester." He gestures at the professor just in case Tony doesn't know who Fowler is.

"I'll say," the man grumbles under his breath.

"Oh? What happened?" Tony says in his most innocent tone, like this thing is news to him. His voice keeps miraculously steady despite his pounding heart.

Disingenuously calm, the dean proceeds to explain: "It seems that everyone got a perfect score on the final test." He smiles thinly, inclining his head just slightly as he rests his hands on the desk, one over the other. "That's a highly irregular situation, you understand, so we're just making sure that nothing _untoward_ took place."

"You'd almost think," Fowler interrupts, glaring poison at Tony, "that they knew what the answers were before they sat the test, _Stark_." He, unlike the dean, says Tony's name like it tastes of barbed wire.

Tony hums. "It's probably because you're, like, such a good teacher." He offers them his most winning smile, like he hadn't just insulted Fowler. "Your point?"

Turning beet-red, Fowler splutters, sending flecks of saliva everywhere.

"Well, that's very kind of you, Tony," the dean mediates, pretending obliviousness. His small bureaucratic smile never leaves his face. "But we're a little concerned about the possibility that someone… oh… gave the answers to the class ahead of time."

Tony's hands are sweating again, but _Stark men are made of iron_, and he can't let them know that they have him by the short hairs. Maybe if he insults them both enough, they'll let him go. …_I'm just delaying the inevitable, aren't I? _He wishes the monster was here. It would bite the dean's ankles or throw down the plaques and diplomas hung on the office's walls—somehow create enough of a distraction for Tony to flee.

But he's on his own.

Looking at the dean, Tony points at Fowler with his chin. "You have such little faith in your employee here."

Fowler is practically growling, obviously struggling to keep his mouth shut. There is a vein in his temple that looks about ready to pop.

"I'm sure Mr. Fowler does his best, Tony," the dean says, his smile fading minutely, "but surely you know how unlikely it is for an entire class to get an A on the final exam." He looks right at Tony, as if trying to tell him something. "You know the numbers, Tony."

_Tony. _Like they are friends or something. Like he's trying to get Tony to incriminate himself, because _what are secrets between friends, right? You can tell me_ _about that black eye, Tony, it's not like I'm a reporter._

Yeah, Tony's not forgetting _that_ _one_ any time soon. That's how he can tell what the dean is trying to do. For a second, his blood chills enough that he stops feeling his heartbeat. "Yeah, when you think about it, it's, like, totally unlikely," he agrees, deliberately talking like a teenager, hoping—praying—he's projecting _young, innocent, not me_. "I wonder how _that_ happened."

Fowler can't take it anymore. He slaps his hands against his chair's wheels violently. "You happened!" he bellows, grabbing Tony's elbow in a hard grip. "You did it. I just know it."

Tony tears away reflexively, jumping to his feet on the other side of the chair from Fowler. "What's your damage, old man? Step off!" he demands hotly, though internally he's cold as ice. "You can't just _accuse_ me without proof," he half-pants half-threatens, angry and scared and wanting his monster here with him. _Please_.

The dean lowers his head and pinches his nose under his glasses, the very picture of defeated resignation. "Let's everyone keep calm, please?" he asks, dropping his hand back to the desk and shooting Fowler a tired glance. "No one is accusing anyone—"

"I'm not _just_ anything, Boy," Fowler explodes, turning his wheelchair around to face Tony.

Tony's fists tighten at his sides. "Get real!"

"You didn't come to my class _once_," Fowler barks, punching his wheels with all the frustration of someone who's really, really itching to stand up and punch Tony but is confined to a sitting position. "You expect me to believe that you _magically _got a hundred percent, when you couldn't even get a B in the midterm?"

_Oh shit,_ Tony thinks. _Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit_. They have no proof, but they _know_, and Fowler is no flower, no matter what the students call him. He's a bulldog, and he won't let go until he asphyxiates his prey. "I'm a wicked student," he manages, though it comes out as a rough whisper. He looks Fowler right in the eye, defiant to the last. "Have you seen my other grades? A-o-rama, all the way. Why would I need to cheat?"

Fowler smirkslike napalm in the jungle, burning and savage. "Exactly my point." He points a sausage of a finger at Tony. "You had every reason to cheat for that A you _thought_ you deserved."

Tony thinks of the C, of answering a test perfectly accurately and of being marked down because his opinion was different, and he suddenly can't keep it to himself. "Well, yeah, _so what if I did_?" he yells raggedly.

The dean's office goes completely silent.

Tony forgets how to breathe. _Shit, fuck, dammit, I'm so totally screwed_, he thinks, already seeing the headlines, the plummeting value of the company's stocks, his father's stony face as he reminds Tony what a disappointment he is.

Suddenly, the voice in the back of his mind, the one he usually tries not to listen to because it has all the bad ideas, urges him: _I can confess to using the page!_

Wait, _what?!_

_Confess, yes,_ his brain provides gleefully,_ but only like my classmates would confess!_

And since he has literally no other plan, Tony goes for it. "So when I found a copy of the test in my room, there like a gift from Heaven or something, I used it."

_I just solved it as practice, _his mind provides. _I didn't know what it was!_

"I just solved it as practice," Tony parrots hollowly, clenching his eyes shut and hanging his head. The shame in his voice in not entirely fake. "It was there and—and I used it because I was desperate. I didn't question it."

It's still silent. So silent that the only sound is Tony's agitated breathing.

Tony cracks one eye open, still expecting someone to yell at him, or a crystal tumbler thrown at his head.

Fowler's eyes are wide and his mouth with its fat lips is hanging open.

"Sit down Tony," the dean orders softly, "you look like you're about to pass out." He has an oddly gleeful glint in his eyes, and why shouldn't he? The man hates Tony and he just got the confession he needs to expel him.

"Right," Tony says weakly, and sits back down. As he gets his lungs and heart under control, he feels someone gripping his shoulders from behind and hot breath on the nape of his neck. The thought, _my monster is here, I'm safe now,_ crosses his mind, and it's a good job he's sitting down, or else his knees would be giving out right about now.

Even if they expel him, he'll be alright. Even if Howard kicks him out too, disowns him, he'll be all right. Even if not a single college wants to take him in after this, he'll be alright. He has his monster, and that is all he needs.

o

After a moment, the monster stops nuzzling Tony's neck and nudges his ear.

_I should pay attention,_ Tony thinks, blinking. Suddenly, as if cotton wads just fell out of his ears, he becomes aware that the office is no longer playing the part of a tomb. In fact, it rather sounds like the dean and Fowler are whispering furiously at each other.

"….fits with what Mr. Hammer told us, does it not?" the dean is saying to Fowler with an arched eyebrow. "The _likely story_ about the test appearing under his door you doubted so much, remember?"

_Hammer? Justin Hammer? _Tony thinks, remembering the scholarship guy who'd trailed after Tony like a lost duckling when he was a freshman. He wonders just how much pressure dean and Fowler had put him under that he would admit to cheating. Had they threatened to drop his scholarship? The guy is a brown-noser and a tool, but to lose his scholarship over Tony's tantrum? Low. Tony owes him for pre-emptively confirming his story—but then, Hammer is a tattle-tale. He doesn't deserve Tony's compassion.

When he comes down to the real world again, Tony finds Fowler fuming silently, his nostrils flaring like valves. _Really puts the 'bull' in 'bulldog'. _He leans back into the comforting presence of his monster, and the claw-tipped fingers, now as big as a real human's, tighten reassuringly on his shoulders. "So, what now?" he asks. "I mean, I had no idea that it was a copy of the final until I saw the actual final."

The dean pauses his staring contest with Fowler and turns to Tony with his slimy smile. "Of course you didn't, why would you?" He's all gentleness and understanding, and it rings false, wrong. "And you felt that you couldn't admit the truth or you would risk incriminating yourself. We understand."

Tony has no idea what's going on, why the dean is suddenly on his side, but he's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. _I regret every bad thought I had about you. Even if you sound like a rusty dot matrix printer._ He nods slowly.

"But... he cheated," Fowler complains—whines, actually. "He should be expelled, or at least made to re-take the class."

"Yes," says the dean, pushing his glasses up his nose, "but apparently, so did all the other fourteen students." He smiles thinly, letting that sink in. "Shall we punish them all for the sin of taking advantage of the available resources to solve a problem? They are majoring in _engineering._" He shakes his head as he takes a deep breath. "We should be applauding them, not punishing them." He glances at Tony out the corner of his eyes and the corner of his mouth facing Tony twirls up as if in complicity.

Tony tries not to grin too obviously, but it's all he can do to keep his face relatively straight. He never expected this, never in his wildest dreams.

"Besides, the grades are fixed," the dean continues. "Even if we knew who took the test in the first place, all we can do is take the final out of the grade."

Fowler growls, but he looks a lot more composed than he did moments ago. At the very least, his coloration resembles something human. "He's lying," he insists through clenched teeth. "He did it himself. I know it."

_Of course I did,_ Tony thinks, _and I'm getting away with it, too. I'm, like, totally rad._ Then, like magic, he gets inspired again:_ now I shift the blame and give him a new target_. He clears his throat and comments idly, "Wonder how anyone had access to a final, though." No, oops, there's a smile in his voice. Tony tones his elation down so it doesn't show so much. "I mean, you people probably keep them under lock and key, right?"

The dean turns his head to look at him, the movement making his glasses catch the sun streaming in through the windows. "You make an interesting point, Tony," he says. "We'll look into it."

The bright glare covers both lenses, obscuring his eyes so Tony can't accurately gauge if he's joking, patronizing, or truthful. He believes he might get away scot-free, but he checks just in case. "So... I'm free to go? Like, you never did answer."

"Yes, yes," the dean says impatiently, looking at him over the rims of his glasses. "And, oh, I was meaning to ask you," he smiles his bureaucrat smile. "Please do remind your father about the new physics lab this time, will you?"

Suddenly Tony remembers Howard's words, _Women will sleep with you for my money or my company_, and he thinks, _not just women, Dad_, with a bitter taste in his mouth_. _

The monster's claws dig painfully into his flesh, but it's not enough to distract him from the feeling of having a metaphorical bucket of ice-water dumped on him.

"You know it," Tony hears himself say, almost as if in a trance, as he gathers the tube with his blueprints. When he leaves the dean's office, monster hanging off him like a cloak of gloom, he doesn't look back.

He needs a shower.

* * *

><p><em>Yinsen snorts in the darkness, their cell only lit by the glow of the reactor. "You were so stupid, for a genius, not to see what was right in front of your eyes."<em>

_Tony would love to throw something at him, except the only thing he has is his pillow, and he doubts Yinsen would give it back. "Oh, yeah? Look who's talking, goat-herder."_

_He gets a shoe in the stomach for his efforts._

_He doesn't give it back until the next morning._


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Thanks Nyx! What would I do without you people? **

* * *

><p><em>The servos move the suit's leg as Tony is wearing it, and he can barely feel the weight of its metal skeleton. <em>

_"Loki would love this," he tells Yinsen as he takes it off. He's become too used to speaking his thoughts aloud; not being able to do it makes something itch in the back of his mind. "He's been bugging me to make him a Gundam since he discovered how to stream anime."_

_Yinsen lays the prototype on the table and tilts his head. He looks like a bird of prey, with his hooked nose and his eyes big behind his glasses. "He has?"_

_"Of course he has. Nobody in their right mind_ doesn't_ want a Gundam suit," Tony explains, in the tone of someone stating the obvious for someone very dull._

_Yinsen shakes his head. "No, I meant... Your qarin talks to you?"_

* * *

><p>Tony exits his en-suite bathroom—a perk of being a senior and the son of a millionaire, just as not having a roommate—in just his towel and flops face-down on the bed, exhausted. His hair is dry enough not to be dripping but still wet, and his skin is moist, so that even minuscule currents of air are enough to raise goose-bumps.<p>

He doesn't care: he's safe, he's not getting expelled, he's keeping that A and his 4.0 GPA, he won't have to return home to Howard's hateful gaze—and the best part of the ordeal is currently sniffing curiously at his feet.

Even as it reaches out with a thin tongue to rasp between his toes, Tony feels affection for the creature swell in his chest. The monster came when he needed it, and that is all that matters. The stupid thing has become more than a good-luck charm; it's his personal portable cheerleader and safety blanket combined.

Said stupid thing apparently finds Tony's foot hygiene acceptable, because it moves onto tickling Tony's leg hair with its whiskers.

Grinning into the coverlet, Tony wiggles his leg out of reach, and the monster takes this as an invitation to pounce on it and nibble ineffectively at the back of Tony's knee with its small mouth. It's playful—Tony knows this because he also knows that, if it was meant to hurt, the monster could make its mouth bigger and sharper—and it tickles even more than the leg hair thing, and Tony finds himself squirming to dislodge the monster.

It falls between Tony's shins—probably on its back, as he can feel it scrambling to get upright, its shifting fur sticking slightly to his damp skin—and, in retaliation, slips under the towel. There isn't much room, as the towel around his legs constrains just how wide he can spread them, and the monster has to squirm to squeeze into the hollow between Tony's thighs.

Tony's shoulders shake from the laughter he's containing, up until the moment when he feels a snout lodge itself behind his balls, and then he freezes. It takes the feeling of a raspy tongue combing through his short hairs and the thought, _mmm, yes, that feels good,_ for Tony to realize there's something terribly _wrong_ going on and scramble into action.

He raises his hips to tug the towel free and turns around as he pulls away, leaving the towel behind.

The disgruntled monster yowls at him, menacing despite its disheveled fur, and kneads the towel with its claws like it'd rather be raking them across Tony's neck.

Looking at it, now that he's sitting against the wall with his knees to his chin, bare-assed and hot-cheeked, Tony can't believe he got aroused by an _animal_ innocently licking at his privates. _For fuck's sake, what is wrong with me? _he wonders, grabbing at his hair and burying his face in his knees.

Heroin is one thing, but bestiality? No. There is a limit to his depravity.

Several velvety pokes startle him into looking up, and he sees the monster standing up on its hind legs, leaning on Tony's shin with its front paws and nuzzling into his knee. Relaxing slightly at the show of worry, he offers it a sheepish smile and a gentle pat on the head, right between the horns.

The monster closes its glowing eyes in pleasure and rubs up into his hand, pressing itself closer.

_I liked it_, Tony thinks suddenly, and a new wave of shame washes over him. He closes his eyes and tries to drive the thought from his head, because _why_. Why did he like it? What is _wrong_ with him?

Probably sensing his distress, the monster pushes through between his raised legs and leans itself along his chest. It's purring as it rubs its cheek into Tony's sternum, its whole body vibrating with it, warm and soft against his chilled skin.

Tony hugs it close, gathering it up in his arms and crossing his legs at the ankles so his thighs will bear some of the weight and, in turn, get some of the warmth. _I'm sorry_, he thinks, pressing his face into the monster's body, _so sorry_.

The monster's head is stuck between Tony's shoulder and jaw, but it doesn't seem to mind. In fact, it purrs louder and laps at the fleshy bit behind Tony's jaw with a tongue that isn't raspy anymore, but entirely too human-like instead.

Tony shivers at the sensation, confused as to what he should do. The monster doesn't know what it's doing—doesn't know the effect that kind of touches have on him—so is it really wrong to simply enjoy them? _I love it_, he admits internally.

And then, as if he'd opened the floodgates, the thoughts start coming in, one after the other—

_I love it when he licks me like that._

—Tony finds himself nodding along, hugging the monster closer—

_I love how his fur feels against my skin._

—turning his head to rub his face against the luxurious fur—

_He's so warm, and I'm so cold._

—kissing up the monster's cheek, letting it lick at his lips—

_It feels so good, having him this close_.

—wondering when exactly he started referring to the monster as _he._

_Wait, what?_

Tony's blood goes cold in his veins and he pulls away to stare wide-eyed at his monster. His jaw may have dropped a little too.

Here's the thing: the monster is an _it,_ not a _he._

It's _never been_ a _he._

The creature opens one eye as if checking what's the hold-up and then, when it spots Tony's utterly bewildered and slightly terrified expression, it tenses—so much that Tony realizes just how relaxed and _pliant_ it was before—and lifts its head to stare back.

That's the moment when Tony realizes he's still holding the thing that has apparently been_ putting thoughts into his head for the past six months_, and he throws it away from himself with a yelp.

Startled, it tries to grab on with its claws and succeeds, hanging on like the leech it is.

_Get it off, get it off! _Tony screams inside his head, shaking his arm violently, uncaring of the tearing pain.

Suddenly the freaking _hooks_ retreat, and one last hard shake of Tony's arm sends the monster flying, flying, flying before it crashes into the oak footboard of the bed and drops down. It stays there, crumpled in on itself like a raven shot out of the sky, and whimpers pathetically.

A fist crushes Tony's heart, but no, he won't pity it. The fucking _parasite_ has been—has been mind-controlling him or something and, and—

_Why am I doing this?_

They are just… words in his head, in his own mental voice. If he didn't know—if he hadn't worked it out seconds ago—he might have believed them to be his own thoughts. He doesn't know for sure, actually, and that terrifies him more than the knowledge that a great deal of his decisions have been actually made by the monster—now he even can't even trust his own thoughts.

The monster stands on its tiny feet, its eyes huge and innocent.

_I should hold him, not push him away,_ Tony thinks suddenly, and he just _knows_ this isn't his thought, _he'll make me feel better, like he always does._

And—_oh. _Oh,_ fuck._

The, the dependence thing—the thing where he needs the monster there to feel safe. He hadn't noticed, but now that he thinks back, he can see it. It's all on purpose, a parasite's design to keep its host close.

It was just using him all along.

_Like the dean,_ Tony's traitorous brain provides. _Like the women Howard warned me about._ He feels like vomiting, and the pain isn't helping. _How could I possibly think that a soul-sucking monster could love me?_ he wonders, looking down at his forearm. It's not too bad. _Hubris. _His fist tightens and blood wells up from the cuts. _Or willful blindness?_

And then, hesitantly, an errant thought crosses his mind: _I should take care of the hurt._

"Shut up!" Tony shouts at the monster, suddenly wanting to kick it until he feels something break.

The creature's eyes widen so much they might pop out at any moment, and it scurries off the bed like a cockroach, disappearing underneath.

And Tony's mind is blissfully silent as he gets dressed.

o

At Medical, the nurse reminds him that students aren't allowed pets in the dorm ("Not even you, Mr. Stark"), but she cleans and wraps his arm.

Tony merely smiles sheepishly and says he'd keep that in mind, not denying or confirming anything. The monster is sterile—he knows this from previous encounters with its claws and fangs—and the only bacteria that can have fallen into the cuts are the ones already on his skin, and he'd had a shower right before. The last thing he wants is Medical thinking it was a raccoon or something and giving him shots for rabies.

The nurse finds a doctor to make him a prescription for broad-spectrum antibiotics for five days, just in case. She hands it to him with a wink.

Tony doesn't see the phone number written in pencil on the back until he's already given it to the pharmacist, and by then it's too late to reclaim it. It's okay, though; he's not in the mood for entertaining women, and besides, he seriously doubts Miss Nurse would have given him her number if she hadn't known his surname.

Since he doesn't want to return to his room just yet and he doesn't have Rhodey on campus to bug, Tony kills time walking around campus and, head still in turmoil, around Cambridge.

About an hour before sunset, he discovers a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop full of people dressed in all-black. He feels a little trepidation going in, but they are cool and don't look down on Tony because he's partial to colors. The coffee is shit but the pastries are passable, and the music? Well, the music is what makes Tony stay.

Night comes. Tony still doesn't feel like confronting his room and the monster inside. So he goes to the computer lab to see if he can hammer out a program for DUM-C's hand servos, even though the place he ordered them from won't deliver them for a while.

o o o

Tony sleeps in the lab, eats out, showers once before realizing he doesn't have more clothes, buys more clothes, and so on and so forth. Thus he manages to avoid going back to his room for a full two more days, until the grad students kick him out of the lab because "you're always here and it cramps my style." Then he takes refuge in the crappy coffee shop with the rad music.

At this point, however, he's scared of going back because, well… It's been three days and the monster hasn't sought him out. It's never done that before, leave him alone when he asks; in fact, it's been just the contrary: always sticking to Tony even when he wanted to be alone, no matter if it had to sneak in under the door to do it.

Besides, now that he isn't so angry anymore, Tony understands a lot more than he did before.

For example, the fact that:

it was the monster who saved his bacon with the dean.

It seems so obvious, now that he's looking for it, but back then he'd been completely _paralyzed_, silently asking for his monster like little kids ask for their mommies; hell, he'd already cracked under pressure and confessed and was too busy screaming internally to notice anything, let alone thoughts that weren't his. And then inspiration had hit, yes—only it hadn't been inspiration at all, had it, it was the monster. Which had somehow learned how to lie without lying, to manipulate humans other than Tony into doing what it wanted them to do… which was help Tony.

Another thing Tony's realized:

the monster is sentient.

The ability to lie demonstrates intelligence. Taking care of Tony—getting him out of his drug habit, making him accept Jarvis's love, subtly giving him tips during sex with Rainbow—demonstrates emotional intelligence. And the fact that it can communicate ideas to Tony (like that time Tony just _knew_ the monster had gotten lost on the journey from the farmhouse to MIT, or just three days ago when it told Tony to take care of the cuts) leaves no doubt as to its sentience.

And if it's sentient, and it saw Tony having sex and knew how much Tony liked it, then it was perfectly aware of what it was doing when it licked at Tony's lips. (Thinking of that brings warmth to Tony's cheeks, and he touches his lips absently, remembering the licking tongue, tailored so it wouldn't rasp…)

And this brought him to epiphany number three:

the monster_ does too_ love him.

At the time, Tony thought it didn't and had just been using him to get its fix. Now he knows that this sort of self-deprecating thinking happened because he'd just come from the dean pretending to be his ally and expecting funding in return—which yeah, he can admit it now, it hurt. It hurt like a bitch, and just the _idea_ of the monster, who has become his best friend in the whole world, doing the same? Salt on an open wound.

But then he'd started thinking again, including information he'd been too biased to consider: the fact that the creature's claws are sharp enough to slice _floor_ _carpeting_ open, and that it had let go of Tony's arm before it could do any real damage. It had left him alone when told to, which… If all the monster had wanted was Tony to feel emotions it could eat, then why not follow and terrorize him instead of giving him space? It would have been a lot more cost-effective. In fact, why show itself to Tony at all, when it could have continued following him around invisibly?

Some form of affection for Tony on part of the monster is the only possible explanation.

Q.E.D.

But then, if it loves Tony so much, why be an asshole and (literally!) put unnatural thoughts in his head? That's the prevailing thought, the one that makes the warmth fade, taking his heart with it and leaving behind a gaping hole. Because, _how_ could it do that? How could it invade the privacy of Tony's thoughts, the _one refuge he has_?

Unless:

the monster doesn't know any better.

The engineer in him, the one that sees things almost objectively, suggests that maybe that's the only way it can communicate. It would make sense, for whatever species the monster is: if they sustain themselves on human emotions, then naturally they would find a way to unobtrusively guide their hosts into feeling _more_ of the yummy emotions. The monster shouldn't have shown itself, let alone start talking to him…

And just for that, Tony is willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Give _him_ the benefit of the doubt.

_Fuck, that's going to take some time to get used to,_ he thinks.

A knock on the door startles him as he shakes the last drops of pee from his dick. "Busy!" he yells.

"Well hurry up!" the man outside shouts back, sounding urgent.

Tony rolls his eyes and stuffs his genitals back into his pants. "Gimme a second!" he returns, turning to wash his hands. When he looks up, he locks gazes with his reflection and what he sees isn't pretty. His eyes are red, and the area underneath them is so purple from lack of sleep that it looks bruised. His skin is pale, too, maybe because he hasn't been eating well—mainly coffee, pastries, and antibiotics. He sighs as he dries his hands and grabs the doorknob through the paper towel.

The man outside the door pushes in past Tony, nearly throwing him to the floor. Asshole.

Tony clenches his fists, but he's not angry—having lived without his own personal private bathroom, he knows the feeling of urgency that comes with wanting to take a dump and having to wait.

The acid burning in the pit of his belly might be from hunger but it's not. It's from anxiety. He really doesn't know how the monster will react—or, truthfully, if he's even still there waiting for him at all.

Taking a deep breath, Tony starts the journey to his room.

o

It's exactly how he left it. Bedcovers mussed, towel on the floor, the chair slightly pulled out from the desk, windows drawn, light turned on.

Tony swallows hard and steps inside, closing the door behind him. His heart is thumping and he can actually hear it in the silence. He thinks of several things to say to break the ice—_can you read my mind_ or _hello asshole _or _we need to talk _or_ are you still here? Please be here_—but the thing that comes out is: "So, you're a _he_, then?"

At first, nothing happens. But then, just when Tony is gathering courage to take a peek under the bed, most of the darkness in the rooms travel along the walls and floors until it coalesces into a human-shaped shadow on the wall.

Just a shadow, cast by nothing, with horns and glowing green will-o'-the-wisps for eyes, as if light bulbs had been plugged in there instead of eyeballs.

It nods slowly.

He. He nods slowly.

Tony makes fists with his hands so they won't shake so much. Fuck, but this is creepy. Then he thinks, _why am I scared, this is just the monster_, and he jerks back as if slapped. "Don't _do_ that!" he whispers furiously.

The shadow—the monster—tilts its head like a confused puppy. The words come into Tony's mind as if they were born there: _what do I mean? _

For some reason, it feels like rot has set in his brain. Like a cancer, only the feeling is entirely imaginary. Tony tries not to gag. "Don't talk as if you are me," he manages, and suddenly he feels like sitting down. Unable to look at the monster any longer, he turns away and drops down on his bed, head in his hands.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees the shadow creeping along the wall until it disappears behind him, and thinks, _the monster doesn't understand what I mean. _

This time it doesn't feel so bad, mainly because it might have been Tony's own thought (he can't tell them apart at _all_, and it fills him with great, terrible awe). What if the monster doesn't understand the concept of "_I"_? What if it—if _he_ thinks that "I" is always Tony and "he" is always the monster? Tony groans and lifts his head. _I need to give the monster a name. _"I'm giving you a name," he says at last, marveling that he hadn't thought of that before.

_A… name?_ Tony thinks, mulling it over in his head, and he knows it's the monster talking._ I should explain what a name is._

Tony allows himself a little smile. It's okay. He's _letting_ the monster talk in his head with his voice; he has his permission. For now. "A name is a word or phrase we assign to people to identify them easily," he says patiently. It's strange how calm he feels in the monster's presence—then again, the thing is probably starved of emotions after three days. "My name is…" he hesitates, not knowing if his creature will understand the complexities of having both a name _and _a nickname.

_Tony_, the monster fills in, _my name is Tony_. Behind Tony, the bed dips under his weight—he has peeled himself away from the wall. _Mate-with-metal-in-her-body's name is Rainbow. Angry-bulldog's name is Fowler. He understands._

That _he_ means the monster, Tony decides, still pressing his lips tight from hiding a smile at Fowler's nickname. "Yup. And we need one for you, too."

A wave on confusion washes over Tony, followed by something that feels like confused radio static and then sounds like _but the monster is not people, the monster is monster._ Suddenly there are twin points of pressure on either of his shoulders, like the monster is resting his hands there.

Tony leans back until his back is against the monster's… chest? His chest. "Of course you are a person," he says with all the confidence of a soon-to-be seventeen-year-old. "You're a person and my best friend, but don't tell Rhodey." He reaches up across his chest to lay his hand on the monster's. "I was thinking… how about _Loki_? For the trickster god?" He squeezes the hand comfortingly. "You've got quite the silver tongue on you, you slippery bastard."

The monster doesn't answer right away, unless pressing closer to Tony counts as answer. After a while, though, it rests its head into the nape of Tony's neck, and Tony thinks, _he likes it, he likes his name._

"_I_ like my name, more like," Tony replies, ticked off. "You're an _I_ now, and I'm a _you_. Or a _Tony_." He huffs and drops his hand to his lap, feeling slightly warm from the black little bonfire that is the monster—that is Loki. "If you're going to talk in my head, I want to be able to tell, _Loki_."

A shudder travels all along the monster's surface—Tony can feel the ripples all over his back—and leaves behind hairless skin, like Tony's own if he took a razor to his arms and legs. One of the hands on his shoulders strokes down his arm and gently takes Tony's, placing it where it was before. The arm remains around him, holding him tight. _I like my name, Tony,_ the monster whispers in his head.

Trying not to think of how _neat_ it is to hear the monster call his name, Tony stares at the arm. It's black. Not like Rhodey is black, but actually more like oil-slick black—black like the eternal abyss between the stars, greedily absorbing all light. Under his touch, the skin feels plastic, too smooth and too flawless to be organic. He strokes it anyway, welcoming the physical contact. "I'm glad you like it."

The monster—_Loki_ purrs, his whole body rumbling where it's draped over Tony's back, and nuzzles Tony's neck.

Actually, no, wait, he's _kissing it_.

Tony thinks _ah, ah, ah, no_ and immediately pulls away, disentangling the monster from his body. He ends up standing, his hands raised in a _keep away _gesture, watching the monster that looks like a human corpse recovered from a tar pit, minus genitals and plus a couple of wicked-sharp horns. "Don't. Don't do that."

Kneeling on the bed, Loki tilts his head sideways and sits on his heels, blinking his firefly eyes slowly. _But I like the,_ he starts and cuts himself off, looking down at his lap. He stays like that for a moment as he thinks, still as a statue, and suddenly:_ But Tony likes the kisses. Loki feels the warmth right here. _He touches a claw-tipped hand to his lower stomach, right where Tony usually feels the first stirrings of arousal.

_Because that isn't creepy at all. _Taking a shuddering breath, Tony approaches the bed carefully and holds up his fist.

The monster knows what it is. He closes his own hand and bumps it into Tony's, and a jagged cut opens where a homo sapiens would have a mouth, curled up at the corners and back-lit with the same green light as the eyes.

_I like it when we touch our hands _sounds in Tony's head, and warmth suffuses his chest. He can tell the monster meant _I_ as in _Loki_, somehow, or at least he likes to think that's what he meant. "I like it too," he says warmly. "But no kissing. You've been driving my head for months, and I need to know what of me is really me and what is you."

That gets him a tilted head, and it's pretty obvious that Loki doesn't understand Tony's issues. But after regarding Tony for a while, the monster gives a tiny nod. _Loki must not kiss Tony_, he thinks at him, and holds his hand up for another fist-bump.

Tony thinks _not yet, anyway_ but doesn't say it out loud. Instead, he gives the monster his fist-bump and smiles. "Thanks, Loki."

* * *

><p><em>Yinsen is one step too many away from Tony to help him get out of the exoskeleton arm.<em>

_"What?" Tony asks, blinking at the sudden distance. "You asked. So don't look so horrified."_

_Yinsen shakes his head. "_You_ named him?" he breathes slowly, looking worried. "Stark, names have power, especially for supernatural creatures. You should not have given him one!"_

_Tony rolls his eyes. "Oh, don't tell me you believe in that new-age fairy-tale mumbo-jumbo crap." He arches an eyebrow at his fellow captive and moves his arm, still clad in the non-functional prosthesis, to get Yinsen's attention._

_Yinsen continues shaking his head, but he helps get it off._


	10. Chapter 10

_Raza is holding Tony's blueprints in his hands and talking about the bow and arrow helping Genghis Khan conquer his empire._

_Tony's heart is in his throat—he's come too far to be discovered now—but the man seems to be examining them one by one, using them more as a prop than anything else._

_Yinsen, from his position in the hands of the mob of terrorists, shakes his head. _Don't say anything. He might get ideas_._

_Tony remains quiet. _

_Suddenly Raza starts talking in a language Tony doesn't understand—and he's had Yinsen teach him Dari and Pashto already—coming closer and closer to Yinsen. _

_Yinsen attempts to explain, though Tony doesn't know what, and suddenly he's on his knees, head pressed down into the anvil Tony uses for forging._

_Raza is holding him down by the neck; in his other hand, he's holding a glowing coal with tongs. He barks out questions._

_Yinsen's eyes track the burning coal as he blurts out answers hurriedly, and all Tony understands is the word Jericho. _

_Seeing where this is going, Tony takes a step closer. _

_Stupid move. The men all point their weapons at him._

_Tony raises his hands and tries not to clench his jaw. "What do you want? A delivery date?" He looks at Yinsen's face—his savior's face—and he doesn't even need to think about it. "I need him. Good assistant."_

_Raza drops the hot iron. "You have two days to assemble my missile."_

_Tony looks him in the eye, furious but biting his tongue, and nods._

_When they are alone again, Tony studiously doesn't help Yinsen stand. Instead, he grabs a bunch of scrap steel and starts working on the armor's helmet._

_After a moment, Yinsen comes up to him. "How did the new rules work out with Loki? Did he take it lying down?"_

_Tony snorts. "Of course not. I had to fight him every step of the way."_

* * *

><p>Over the next few weeks there are a few close calls regarding the respecting-boundaries thing.<p>

One day, when he's fighting with a particularly vicious piece of code on his computer, the monster slithers up his body in the shape of a snake, curling himself around Tony's neck scarf-like. The effect is instantaneous: all frustration and anger fall from Tony like leaves from a tree, and he manages to find the mistake—a missing _fucking_ semi-colon—in a second. When, proud of himself, Tony absently turns his head to kiss Loki's neck, the asshole turns his head too and pokes Tony's lips with his scaly snout. Tony unwinds him from around himself and drops him unceremoniously onto the floor.

(Growling, the monster claws at Tony's ankles in revenge.)

Another day, Tony wakes up to a shapeless blob of darkness looming over him like a coffin lid. The blob is vaguely human-like, and, upon seeing he's awake, it compresses into Loki's humanoid shape, floating over him like Peter Pan. Loki's face drops closer to rub their noses together, and Tony warns him, "You better not try to kiss me again," but allows the contact, enjoying the intimacy. Then Loki ruins it by going for it anyway, and Tony pushes him away hard enough that he loses his balance and drops to the floor.

(The monster avoids him for three days.)

After three of perfectly good behavior—to lure Tony into a false sense of security, probably—Loki comes up behind Tony one day as he's brushing his teeth in his underwear, getting ready for morning classes. He's running late and trying very hard to ignore his morning wood, but Loki's having none of it. He just slips his hand inside Tony's shorts. Tony walks into the shower stall and turns the cold water on. He stands there, shivering and glaring at the tiles, until his arousal goes down.

(Next time Tony takes a shower, his shampoo bottle is empty and there is no soap.)

Then, another day, Loki jumps onto Tony's desk and stands on his hind legs, rubbing his cheek against Tony's jaw. When Tony barely pays him any mind—aside to push him away with a firm _No_—Loki starts filling his head with things like _I love my monster so much _and _I'd like rub his belly _and_ I want to kiss him_ all subtle like, and Tony ends up stroking the little shit for over half an hour, until he's complete purring putty on his lap. Only then does he realize what happened, and he gets so utterly _furious_ that Loki feels it and tries to escape. Tony yells, "I told you not to do that!" and kicks him hard enough to send him flying into the wall.

(Later, the monster catches him unawares and bites his nose with a pointed _Loki hates! Tony_, before vanishing under the bed.)

The close calls continue to happen, despite Tony expressing his displeasure over and over, though they do happen less frequently as Loki slowly learns the concept of _No_. At least, that's what Tony thinks is happening, and he lowers his guard appropriately to reward the monster's learning.

Terrible mistake, that.

o

Tony is completely blocked on the Secret Project—which isn't so secret now, as the grad students found out and are teasing him about it constantly—and he already knows all he needs to for his regular classes, so he's just chilling on his bed, listening to the new mixtape Rhodey gave him a few days ago as a (very) belated Christmas present—part four of "your continued education in actual music, Tony." And, well, Tony still loves the one with AC/DC more than anything because it was the first present anyone ever gave him without expecting something in return, but he's not about to complain.

Loki is in his favorite shape, a cross between a cat and what Tony imagines a small wingless dragon might look like, lounging on the bed next to Tony's thigh and chewing on an assignment Tony just got back from a professor. He's not touching Tony, though; just close by. It's like he hasn't forgiven him for continuing to spurn his affections but he can't bring himself to stay away.

What can Tony say? He knows the feeling. It's the only reason he kept trying to impress Howard when he was a kid.

The song he's currently listening to is mellow and sort of sad. He can't place the artists, band, whatever, since he's never heard them before, but he likes the lyrics. They remind him of Loki, sort of, particularly the line _behind the hatred lies a murderous desire for love_. Hm. Yes, he got the part where the monster loves him—got it loud and clear, even—but he can't take the fact that Loki doesn't listen when he says _no_.

Or rather, that he pretends to listen but then, not five minutes later, goes back to thinking Tony will change his mind if he tries hard enough.

_How can they see the love in our eyes, and still they don't believe us_? asks the singer mournfully, and Tony snorts out loud because this is just _too much_. "I think I found your song," he tells Loki, trying hard not to roll his eyes. What was Rhodey thinking when he put this here? Did he run out of so-called _actual music_?

_Loki's song?_

The words wander into Tony's head hesitantly—the first thought Tony hadn't thought by himself in at least three days. Wow, he hadn't realized they've been ignoring each other that long. "Yeah," he says, lifting his head to look at the monster.

Loki's standing up on the bed, which dips under his comically small paws, and then he's walking over to Tony's shoulder. He lays down on it on his two front paws and nudges at Tony's jaw with his snout. _I want to hear Loki's song_, he whispers in Tony's mind, like Tony hasn't got the message already.

Smirking at the creature's curiosity, Tony rewinds the tape and pulls one of the headphones apart from his ear, letting Loki stick his head in the space between.

Listening to music together like this is warm and comfortable. Tony brings up a hand to cup the back of Loki's neck and rub it softly. Loki purrs and melts even though he disagrees that the song is totally about him, and they stay like that after the song ends.

Then the next one starts, not with the normal, expected musical intro, but with a chorus, and Tony groans and closes his eyes, his cheeks coloring red in shame.

This is the song he fucked that girl to, the girl from the Christmas gala. Oh, what's her name—Merry. She'd put on the latest Bon Jovi LP, they'd giggled at the title ("_Slippery when wet_? Who the hell calls their album that?"), and then he'd kissed her. They had wasted no time getting busy, having already made out _extensively_ in the limo on the way to her home (heh, no wonder the journalist had known to follow them), but instead scrambled to get their clothes off and the condom on.

Just remembering the mind-blowing sex is enough to get Tony's blood pumping and his cock hard.

At the time Tony had been too busy—rocking her world to the rhythm, playing with Merry's generous breasts as he mashed their mouths together, tasting the heat and the sweat on her skin—to notice the song's lyrics, let alone their possible meaning, but now? Now he listens, and wishes he had paid attention: _An angel's smile is what you sell, you promised me Heaven and put me through Hell_ is prophetic in retrospect.

The monster shifts, rubbing himself along Tony's side sensually. Practically humping him, actually.

Bucket. Of cold. Water.

Suddenly Tony is ripping the headphones off and sitting up on the bed to glare at him. "I said _no_."

The monster's form starts melting and coalescing into a ball. Then it expands, taking a vaguely humanoid form that stares at him with glowing green eyes. Loki tilts his head like he always does when he's confused and, after a moment of consideration, he reaches up to place a claw-tipped hand along Tony's jaw.

Tony swallows hard. "Too many fingers, Champ," he jokes in an attempt to dispel the sudden inexplicable tension. He doesn't move away, though—Loki's never done this before.

The light in the eyes flickers, and the number of fingers decreases from seven to five. A black thumb strokes along Tony's cheekbone, the sharp fingernail scraping lightly along the skin, and Loki leans in to kiss him.

"Fuck!" Tony exclaims, jumping back and off the bed. "What part of _no_ don't you understand, you jerk?"

Loki winces slightly at the volume and drops the hand to his still half-formed lap. He's still staring at Tony. _But Loki wants to mate_,he thinks at him, an entirely artificial frown marring his entirely artificial face—he's still leaning to mimic human expressions. _Why not mate with Loki_? _I know you want to._

Right. Because Loki can feel his arousal. Tony shudders. _Well, at least he isn't thinking as if he were me anymore_, he reminds himself, _that's a plus._ "Listen," he says tiredly, because they've had this conversation a million times, it feels like, and Loki still doesn't get it. "I don't like it when you don't listen."

_I am listening_, Loki thinks at him, suddenly looking small. _I don't understand_.

Tony takes a deep breath. Yeah, this conversation is going to require some props. "Wait there," he tells his monster, pausing barely long enough to check that he's being obeyed before turning to his closet and getting out his smallest suitcase. "See this?" he asks, opening it and leaving it on the floor in front of Loki. "I want you to get inside."

Loki recoils as if burned, turning back into a shadow and plastering himself to the wall. Like this, he's two heads taller than Tony and twice as wide; the looming shadow of a menacing giant. _NO,_ he thinks, fuzzy with static around the edges.

Knowing he's finally getting something across—though wondering what's causing Loki's claustrophobia—Tony points at the suitcase. "I don't care what you want or don't want. Get in." It's a command. He never gives Loki commands.

The monster is staring at him with trepidation. He shakes his head furiously. _NO_, he repeats, louder. _Loki doesn't like closed places._

"Well, that thing you're feeling?" Tony says, softening his stance and relaxing his shoulders. "That's _exactly_ how I feel when you insist on…" He blushes. Weird, normally he has no trouble talking about sex. "Yeah. Got it now?" He stuffs his hands in his pockets and looks at the wall on his right. "Just because _you_ want something from me, doesn't mean I have to give it."

Loki blinks at him a couple of times and then slowly, slowly peels himself from the wall, taking a three-dimensional shape again. He approaches Tony, taking a detour around the gaping suitcase like it's about to jump up and eat him, and touches Tony's face.

They stare at each other for a minute, Loki's hand warm and too smooth on Tony's stubbly cheek.

Then the monster nods and drops his hand. He offers Tony a wobbly smile with far too many teeth and asks, _Why not mate with Loki?_

For a second, Tony can't answer, completely blindsided. He thought he'd _finally_ got the message across! Making tense claws with his fingers, he lets out a choked scream and demands, "Why not get in the suitcase?"

The answer is immediate and loud enough that it leaves Tony's head ringing like a church bell:

_Because the last time I let you put Loki in a box, Tony went away and left him to starve!_

Tony's eyebrows shoot up. If the way Loki's surface is rippling agitatedly weren't enough to clue Tony in on how _upset_ Loki is, the mix up of third and first person mid-sentence would have alerted him anyway. "Um," he says, because what else can you say to that? "Loki. I tried to take you with me, remember? But then I got home, and you weren't in the suitcase."

Loki shakes his head furiously. _Loki isn't meaning that, _he clarifies, losing the shape of his hands for a moment in his distress. _Loki's meaning when Tony was a boy_. Eyes start popping open all over his body, five, seven, thirteen, nineteen, more and more and more, all wide and panicked.

Gaping, Tony tries to think back. As far as he knows, the only time he's been to the farmhouse other than last summer was when he was, like, five or six. He can't remember anything from before he was seven aside from snatches here and there, though Jarvis has told him several times he used to be a little hellion—mostly in the context of _you've matured so much, Young Master_ and things like that.

Is it possible that he'd been in contact with the monster back then? That the creature had been influencing his immature mind into—and he only knows this because of Jarvis—tying his kindergarten teacher's shoelaces together, or freeing their pet gerbil, or replacing Maria's sleeping pills with aspirin, or calling Uncle Obie and pretending to be his dad to cancel a meeting so he'd have his Dad all to himself?

Even at five he'd been intelligent. Hell, he'd built his first circuit board at four and his first engine at six, why wouldn't he notice the little voice telling him to do the naughty things? Why wouldn't he try to get rid of it in a misguided attempt to be the Good Son Howard was always telling him to be?

"Fuck," Tony says, letting go of the air he's been holding in one long exhalation. He brings himself to look at Loki, who's still rippling with static, and then he knows exactly what to do. In one swift move, he kicks he suitcase away and throws himself at the monster, hugging him tightly. The static cracks and sparks against his skin, but he doesn't care. "I had no idea. I'm so sorry."

And he knows the monster can feel it. Loki regains enough control over his form to hug him back, resting his chin on Tony's head.

Hoping to calm him down faster, Tony decides to distract him from his feelings of abandonment and hurt by exposing his own. "I don't want to have sex with you because the second I do you'll drop me like a hot potato, just like everyone else," he confesses into Loki's sometimes furry and sometimes latex-smooth shoulder. "Rainbow, Merry, Dave, Samantha…" He closes his eyes. "You were there. You saw what happens." Aw, fuck no, why is his voice so strangled and wet? He'd better not be crying like a total flamer.

A fuzzy hand wipes a tear off his cheek. _Loki saw._ The monster's words echo in Tony's mind as sharp claws rake lovingly over his scalp. _Loki will never leave you._

And it rings true.

The knowledge that a monster that lives off your emotions and can reach into your head to rearrange the circuitry and make you do things just threatened to dog Tony's steps for the rest of his life should scare Tony.

But right now?

The certainty feels like solid ground after a lifetime of quicksand.

o

After that conversation, Loki never tries anything again.

That isn't to say he doesn't ask for what he wants—he still does it, but always in a calm, polite way; all _would you kiss Loki _or _Loki would like a kiss now _or, when Tony wakes up with morning wood, _would Tony like help with that_—but when Tony says "No, thanks," he no longer explodes into a rage or tries to force himself on Tony. He simply nods and does something else to show his affection, like rub his cheek against Tony's shoulder or lick his hands or turn into a cat and curl up in his lap.

Things return to how they were before, intimate and comfortable, and Tony starts allowing Loki to come into bed with him like before. Truth be told, he missed this, missed lying all pressed together and reveling in the warmth and the company. When he wakes up, the monster is generally back under the bed, preferring the darkness to a sleeping and unresponsive Tony, though he comes out as soon as Tony calls for him.

Now that tensions have diminished, they start going out again, sometimes with Rhodey and sometimes alone.

With Rhodey, they go to arcades, to bars, to pick up girls (Rhodey broke up with Amanda before the winter holidays and Tony is just finding out). They go to record stores where Rhodey picks out music for Tony, or to ice-cream parlors where they prove how manly they are by eating ice-cream even though it's still cold as fuck. This is Rhodey's last semester, too, and he won't be around for long—after graduation he'll go back to the US Navy, who are the ones paying his tuition.

With the monster, they go to the movies and sit in the back row, go ice-skating, take walks after sundown, stay up all night chatting or just lying in bed listening to Tony's ever-growing music collection—basically they do the things couples do when dating, though Tony will only realize this later. Also, he teaches Loki how to read—or starts teaching him at least—and buys him children's books he thinks he'll like for practice, and Loki hounds Tony to let him read them to him.

Yeah, life is good.

o o o

And then midterms come.

They are kind of a surprise. Tony's been enjoying an inspired breakthrough on the Secret Project, and between rebuilding and reprogramming DUM-C's arm he loses track of time. By the time he comes back down to Earth, the only way he can still study enough to pass is by pulling a series of all-nighters.

By the end of the week, he's completely burned out. So burned out, in fact, that on the Friday after his last midterm he can't keep his eyes open long enough to undo his belt even though it's only six in the afternoon.

"Loki," he groans pitifully, giving up. "I can't undress." It's light and meant as a joke, in a _hahaha-I-totally-can't-do-basic-human-tasks-look-how-tired-I-am _sort of way, but he's too tired to do much more than smile.

_Want help? _Loki asks eagerly, jumping onto Tony's bed and expanding like a balloon until he has the size to back up his offer. He waits for Tony's dazed nod and then starts undressing him gently, careful not to jostle Tony as he pulls the sweater off over his head and unbuttons his shirt. When he gets Tony down to his undershirt, he guides him down onto his pillow and takes care of the shoes and pants, all the time chanting _sleep, sleep, sleep_ in Tony's head.

Being only half-aware of what's happening, other than that he feels warm and comfortable, Tony doesn't even consider the notion that his monster might get frisky. He just goes with the flow and waits until Loki is done pulling the covers up on him, before tugging him down into bed between his arms.

Loki purrs him to sleep.

* * *

><p><em>Yinsen lets out a soft sound, his nose slightly scrunched up.<em>

_Tony could swear he heard him go 'Awww,' and he grins despite being in a cave in Afghanistan, sans his monster and plus a hole in his sternum with an electromagnet inside. He flips the goggles up on his sweaty face and looks at him. "Come on. You just went '_Awww'_. You totally think he's cute, admit it." _

_Yinsen snorts and shakes his head tiredly. "Fine. I admit it." He rolls his eyes. "Even though I know he's biologically programmed to present himself as cute..." He shrugs. "I think he truly does hold some measure of affection for you."_

_"Of course he does," Tony says with conviction. "I'm me."_


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: Nyx, it might interest you to know that Abyss has inspired a fuckton of fanart, actually, so it's not weird at all. Go right ahead and post it wherever you want, just send me a link and I'll share in the official Abyss blog (link in my profile).**

* * *

><p><em>They work silently for a while. <em>

_Or almost silently—Tony's whistling _ _Maxwell's Silver Hammer_ _ as he bangs the steel into shape, trying not to think of just how close Yinsen was to being killed right in front of him._

_He's not sure he wouldn't just give up if Yinsen had died. He misses Loki, but Yinsen is the one that has been through this with him. Through torture and fear and annoyance and working in secret._

_"Are you just going to stop there?" Yinsen asks suddenly._

_Tony looks down at his work and then, not finding anything critical unfinished, looks up at Yinsen. "It's done," he says._

_And it is. The faceplate is flat and grim, expression forbidding. He wishes he had glass to put in the eyeholes, but this is good enough._

_"I meant your story," Yinsen explains patiently._

_Tony smirks a little. "As you wish, Sultan Schariar."_

* * *

><p>Tony wakes so gently that he barely notices at first. He's warm, his bed feels like it's been tailored specifically for him, there's barely any light in the room, and his skin tingles pleasantly all over. Feeling this good only happens in dreams, right?<p>

But slowly, he becomes aware that the tingling happens in spots and that those spots move back and forth to the beat of his heart, and he starts squirming to try to get the feeling where he wants it.

_Go back to sleep_, a soft voice whispers, soothing and beautiful and just as pleasant as everything else in the world.

Tony thinks that it's a great idea and tries to do so, but one of the tingling spots is just shy of his crotch, and his cock is jealous. He decides to ignore it, but the longer he does, the worse the itch gets, until it reaches the point where it feels like it's burning for a good stroke. Still not entirely coherent, he groans and tilts his hips in the direction of whatever is causing the tingling.

His semi-erect cock brushes against it, momentarily appeasing the burning, but then it, whatever _it_ is, vanishes.

And so does the awesome sensation everywhere else on his body.

Tony groans in protest and opens his eyes, only to find his room almost completely dark. He's awake and wanting and he could _cry_, because suddenly he knows what was happening moments ago.

The whole-body tingling? That was just Loki feeding discreetly. When Tony is awake, he just rubs against him or hugs him or asks for head scratches. When Tony is asleep, however, in the interests of not waking him—because it makes Tony grouchy all day, and also it's rude—Loki touches him as gently and subtly as he can. This means going into octopus mode, as Tony likes to call it, where he remains under the bed and reaches up under the covers to touch Tony with several vine-like limbs. It's generally so subtle that Tony has only caught him doing it like three times, and only because he woke due to other causes (like nightmares or like solving an engineering problem in his dreams).

It also happens to feel like an expensive full-body massage (for certain values of "massage" meaning "worship").

And he wants it _back._

"Lokiiiii, don't go!" Tony whines, turning onto his stomach and putting his hand under the bed. He feels around, hoping to find his monster and get it to see reason.

One of the vines finds his hand and wraps around it. _Loki's here,_ the monster thinks in Tony's head, the tendril winding around his wrist earnestly. _Are you angry?_

_Angry_? Why would Tony be angry about Loki touching him like _tha_—ah, right. The _No Funny Business_ agreement. Tony's cock aches, and he has _so many regrets _right now_._ "I'm totally not angry," he replies, voice hoarse with both sleep and desire. Running his thumb over the vine entwined with his fingers, he tugs on it, silently asking Loki to come out.

Loki does, appearing before his field of vision as twin green stars floating in a slightly darker section of air. _You're horny_, he says, the stars squinting at him.

"Hi there." Tony grins. "Yeah, I'm aware." The hard-on pitching a tent in his boxers is tremendously insistent that he do something about it, so he rolls his hips into the mattress to create some much, much needed friction.

Loki purrs with second-hand arousal and tightens his grip. _Hello_, he replies softly, yet the mental whisper is sweet and low, like a caress. _It seems to Loki that you could use a hand, _he adds casually.

A little _too_ casually, actually, for someone merely making an observation. Tony wonders when Loki learned to flirt, but then the vine around his hand tickles his wrist—it seems that suddenly he has a new erogenous zone, because the graze goes straight to his cock. "Are you offering?" he asks, wrecked.

_Yes_, Loki replies simply, eyes shining brighter with hunger_._

"Good." Tony rocks one last time into his bed, holding his monster's intense gaze all the way, and then turns onto his back and shoves his hand, Loki's tentacle-thing and all, down the front of his boxers.

The tendril instantly leaves his hand to wind around his cock, round and round until it has the whole thing covered in warm, solid, living velvet. The tip, resting just barely on the slippery head, draws circles on it.

Tony's whole body twitches as the electricity travels up his spine, and then he relaxes with a silent exhalation. "Pump me_,_" he tells Loki, biting his lip as the tip of the vine comes full circle. He feels hot under the covers, especially around his neck and chest area, and he wonders just how flushed he must look right now.

Obligingly, Loki starts moving his hand slowly up and down, just like Tony does it to himself—just how long has he been watching him do it?—complete with a little anti-clockwise half twirl around the head and a squeeze at the base. With Tony distracted, he oozes onto the bed and settles next to him, warm and fuzzy against his side, purring like a well-oiled engine.

And _fuck_ but it feels good. Not only is the pumping just _perfect, _also the _closeness_ makes Tony feel warm in ways that have nothing to do with his cock.

Why haven't they been doing this all along?

Another tendril snakes up one of his legs, stroking his inner thigh like Tony strokes those of his girls. Tony bites his lip and spreads his legs to give it room, enjoying the tingling sensation—oh, man, he wants that on his balls _yesterday_—but then the tendril becomes static, and then reforms into a hand. A big, hot hand with just the right number of fingers, that cups his balls and rubs them gently.

Tony moans helplessly, rocking up into the touch. He opens his eyes—can't remember closing them—and watches Loki's face.

Asshole is grinning like the Cheshire cat, except with less crazy and more broken glass.

And Tony hooks a hand behind his neck and pulls him close, kissing it away. Loki's lips, or the edges of his mouth at least, feel about as welcoming as serrated knives, but are also warm, feverishly so. He licks between them and tastes ozone and dust and night.

Loki freezes, filling their combined mind with static. The vine knotted around Tony's cock tightens just shy of painfully; the hand ceases moving completely, like Loki forgot about it.

"Don't stop," Tony whispers urgently, not trusting his voice with more volume than that. He thrusts up into the heat and softens his lips, kissing each of the sharp tips that make up Loki's jagged slit of a mouth, tilting his head to gently swipe his tongue between them.

The whole monster shudders, sparks flying against Tony's skin and firing all sorts of interesting synapses. The vine starts moving again, relaxing and tightening again and again like what Tony imagines a throat might feel like, another tentacle appears from the void to stroke his stomach, and the hand creeps down to stroke his furled hole in gentle circles.

Tony allows this last thing because a) if he trusts anyone with his asshole, it's Loki, and b) it feels _fucking amazing,_ especially when the shadowy fingertips dip just that tiny bit inside. Even though he can barely keep from panting, he presses his mouth sloppily against Loki's again, hand combing through the fuzz on Loki's head.

The kisses leave much to be desired, because, as it turns out, Loki doesn't actually _know_ how to kiss. Even after he gets the memo and copies the shape and texture of Tony's lips, he still can only open and close his mouth like a landed fish. He hasn't learned subtle control yet.

Tony doesn't care. Every sensory nerve in his body is tingling pleasantly when it isn't burning with electricity, and all he has to do to enjoy Loki's meager kissing skills is tilt his head away and push Loki's face into his neck and then, when the hot tongue over his pulse overwhelms him, move him down to his chest.

Loki is nothing if not enthusiastic, and he soon teaches himself how to suck as well as any human. He concentrates on Tony's nipples, fixated with them, and between that and the bites and the vines—now three of them—and the finger that is slipping in and out of him in time with his breathing, Tony thinks he can touch Paradise.

When Tony comes, Loki keeps stroking and rubbing and sucking through it all, extending the rush of orgasm as much as humanly possible. He only stops when Tony returns to Earth, and then his whole body trembles excitedly. He stays there, stuck to Tony's side, as Tony catches his breath, trying to burrow under his chest and nestle next to his heart.

After a moment, when Tony feels like he can talk without missing the air, he reaches up and kisses Loki's head, or possibly the side of his face. "Remind me to let you do that more often," he murmurs, patting something that might or might not be a shoulder. "Nice meal?"

Loki is still shaking. _Very nice_, he thinks at Tony, flattening to cover more of his body. _Orgasms are tasty._

Tony chuckles and closes his eyes, feeling completely sated both physically and emotionally. "Well, I'm glad, because you wore me out." Under Loki, he rolls onto his side, facing away from him. "I'm gonna take a nap now."

The monster snuggles closer, plastering himself along the contours of Tony's back and legs. _Can I have another, after?_

Tugging Loki further onto him so he covers him like a living electric blanket, Tony makes himself comfortable on his pillow and murmurs, "We'll see, we'll see."

o

When Tony wakes up, he finds a bottle of water and a ham sandwich wrapped in plastic film on the floor next to his bed. He's so hungry that the food tastes like Heaven, and he's halfway through his meal before it occurs to him that maybe Loki stole it.

He washes down the mouthful with a long swig of water and asks, "Loki, did you steal these?"

_Of course not! _Loki replies with a growling edge to his mental voice. _I left money from your wallet in their place. _He comes out from the shadows under the desk and walks towards Tony. He stops about five feet away.

Huh. So the monster under his bed figured out money. "Clever," Tony concedes, secretly hoping Loki didn't leave two Bens. _Does he know how to add numbers yet? I can't recall_. He resolves to teach him.

Slowly, while Tony finishes his lunch, the monster creeps closer and closer, until he's laying his head on Tony's knee.

Tony pushes the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and strokes him at the base of the horns. Between eating, drinking, and having Loki there, he feels back to normal already. He can't wait to go to the workshop—he has all of Spring Break to work on his Secret Project and he wants to start as soon as possible.

But then Loki licks his hand, getting his attention, and looks pleadingly up at him. _Want to mate again_? he asks shyly, batting his eyelids like that chick in Labyrinth.

At first, Tony has no idea what he's talking about—"_Again"?—_but then he realizes that the dream he thought he had—of heat and friction and sloppy kisses down his neck and coming so hard he nearly blacked out—actually happened.

Oh, boy.

"Oh, boy," he breathes, dropping back onto the bed. He stares at the off-white expanse of sound-suppressing foam coating his ceiling as he works through _that _bomb.

The thought of doubting Loki—of doubting his promise not to put ideas in Tony's head—crosses his mind, but he dismisses it almost immediately. Evidently, his dick had been doing the driving, while Tony was too asleep and turned on to disagree. But—and here's the kicker—he'd enjoyed himself. A lot.

Just a happy accident. He's not angry.

Tony lets out a long breath and swallows audibly. A dip in the mattress between his legs startles him, and he props himself up on an elbow to see Loki sitting between his thighs, carefully not touching him. He's not angry or disappointed—just a bit surprised—so he lifts his free hand and strokes under Loki's chin.

Loki closes his eyes and leans into the caress so hard he almost tips over. _I could do that thing Rainbow did_, he tells Tony leadingly. _Where she got between your legs._

A blowjob. Loki is offering him _a_ _blowjob—_a blowjob performed by a creature with a loose and changeable concept of _mouth_ and an almost non-existent concept of _breathing._

Tony's cock twitches to life in his underpants, and both he and Loki look down at it. Carefully, he drops his hand from Loki's jaw to his crotch, hiding the bulge from view.

Would letting this happen be a good idea?

Tony considers what Loki wants—

Last time, Loki had just been feeding on the yummy dream-induced emotions. He had been _so_ nervous about having overstepped, nervous and apologetic, but not annoyed at having to stop himself, like he used to get. Now he knows what Tony's orgasms feel like, and he loves the feeling enough to ask for it.

—what he wants—

Tony loves his monster to _bits_. Loki's practically a part of him. When Tony needed an accomplice, Loki was there; when he needed a shoulder to cry on, Loki was there. They do literally everything together and they are nearly perfectly in tune. Sleepy sex with Loki was _fantastic_, he remembers that much, and fully conscious sex? It can only be even better.

—and what his cock wants—

He thinks of the tendril of solid darkness wrapped around his cock that time. Remembers the creative way it moved, stimulating everything at once, and then remembers the other two up his ass, writhing against a hot spot he'd only ever read about before. He imagines fucking that mouth to his heart's content and Loki _letting _him because he has a vested interest in making him come.

—and then, seeing that all those wants overlap, comes to the only reasonable conclusion: _Why the Hell not?_

_Tony?_ Loki calls, making him look up. He's on the edge of the bed, for all appearances ready to get off and leave Tony alone.

"Sorry, I was thinking about it," Tony replies honestly. His dick is larger and fatter now, hot on imagination alone, hungry for some actual action. Tony licks his lips before tugging the elastic of his boxers down and hooking it behind his balls. "Go for it. Make it good."

Loki's eyes flash bright as he grins joyfully. _Thank you_, he says—practically _sings—_in Tony's mind, before becoming human-shaped, dipping his head and licking a broad stripe up Tony's cock.

Tony moans and cups a hand behind his monster's neck.

o o o

Two weeks later finds Tony on his back again, this time under DUM-D—fourth in the series of failures that is the Secret Project—attaching its new suspension system.

(The C version had a mishap involving badly calibrated emotions. When Tony was testing the voice-recognition for insults, the prototype AI got scared instead of angry and, rather than whirr threateningly and beep insults back in Morse code like it was supposed to, it ran away. Since Tony hadn't installed real-world-safeguards yet, it didn't stop when it encountered stairs and fell down two flights, leaving bits and pieces behind.

Tony's half-convinced that the grad students messed something up in jealousy disguised as a prank, but he can't waste time doing detective work when he needs to finish this fucking sentient robot before he graduates.)

A scaly snout pokes him in the stomach, bare where his tank-top rode up, and Tony smacks his forehead on the chassis.

"Gah, Loki!" he shouts in pain, dropping the wrench to rub the sore spot. "What the fuck?"

_Tony, _Loki thinks at him, sounding like he's not even listening to the complaints.

Oh. He wants to talk.

"Give me a second." Tony pushes himself out from under the robot. His hands are covered in grease from where he rubbed it into places, and he hasn't showered in two days, but this is just Loki. So he sits down cross legged, wipes his hands on the outside of his jeans, and pats his lap.

Loki, rather than climb on, blurs and reforms into his humanoid shape. Silently, he sits in front of Tony, mirroring his position—except his head is hanging. _Why did you let me mate with you?_

Tony's eyebrows shoot up. He wonders just how much courage it took Loki to look a gift horse in the mouth, knowing it could be taken away at any moment. Wonders what prompted the question. But he finally understands why Loki hasn't mentioned the now-lifted ban, not even to tease Tony when he initiated a new bout of sex. "Why do you want to know?" he asks, leaning back on his hands.

Lifting his head to look him in the eye, Loki replies, _because I don't understand._ His eyes are glowing, but not as bright as usual. _You said Loki asking to mate felt like being sent to a Box, but you still let me_.

Tony can practically hear the capital _B_, making _being sent to a Box_ code for everything anxiety, betrayal and panic. He smiles softly at Loki and reaches out for him.

Not minding the grease in the least, Loki meets him halfway, pressing his jaw into Tony's hand and offering him a tiny smile. His skin is soft now, not plastic like before—he has become better at appearing human: he even has mostly-blunt pearly white teeth these days, and also something approximating hair.

"I changed my mind," Tony explains, stroking a fake cheekbone with his thumb, comforting and affectionate. "But only because _you_ changed your mind about wanting to make me, first."

And that's basically it, as far as he's concerned.

Loki nods, rubbing his face against Tony's hand like a huge cat marking his territory. _I think I understand_, he says, before leaning forward on his hands. He crawls into Tony's lap, and brings their lips together in a sweet kiss.

Tony smiles and rests his hands on Loki's waist, parting his mouth under Loki's and sucking on his lower lip.

DUM-D can wait five minutes. Or ten.

* * *

><p><em>Yinsen looks absolutely flummoxed.<em>

_His looking surprised after Story Time is normal by now, so Tony doesn't worry. "What arcane rule of dealing with Jinn did I break this time?" he jokes._

_"No rule," Yinsen replies, scratching the side of his mouth in a mannerism he learned from Tony. "You just defy all common sense."_

_Tony snorts. "No, seriously, what did I do?"_

_Yinsen blinks and comes out of his stupor, his eyes focusing on Tony. "You fed orgasms to a creature that eats emotions. Just... Just how powerful is he now? Your Loki, I mean?"_

_"Well, he looks human now, and can talk to other people," Tony shrugs. "Not in their heads, I mean. He can actually speak. And the thing he does when he blends into a shadow? He can take me with him."_

_Yinsen gapes at him. "What?"_

_"It feels completely _wrong_," Tony clarifies, just in case, "but it's also an excellent method of transportation. I've been studying it to see if I can figure out teleportation."_


	12. Chapter 12

_That night they lay awake in bed, again. Tomorrow is the day they have to hand in a Jericho missile—tomorrow they escape from this hell._

_"Say it again," Yinsen commands in a whisper._

_"41 steps straight ahead," Tony says with the confidence of a man who's said the same sentence three hundred times—well, two hundred and eighty nine, to be precise. "Then 16 steps, that's from the door, fork right, then 33 steps, turn right."_

_It's the escape route, the one they've pieced together from the few times they've been taken outside—the steps they have to take to exit the maze that is the cave system or else nothing will help them get out. _

_"Good," Yinsen approves. And then, "Tell me the rest of the story, just in case we don't make it out."_

_Tony closes his burning eyes, a few tears slipping through anyway. "We _will_ make it out," he says fiercely. "But just in case, I'll make it snappy."_

* * *

><p>Between classes, Rhodey, the Secret Project, and the new side to Tony's and Loki's relationship, the next few months practically fly by.<p>

Almost before Tony knows it, finals are over and it's the last day of the three-day MIT Annual Robot Design Expo. Just today and an award-giving ceremony left, and he'll be free to do whatever he wants until the graduation ceremony in almost two weeks.

The only reason he's still here is that he's gonna get that award, no questions asked. Who _would_ protest, what with his groundbreaking AI robot, right? Besides, he's been winning it since he started here.

The expo hall is crowded with middle-schoolers on a trip, journalists for tech magazines, random curious nerds, and the MIT students that stayed behind for one last hurrah before going home. It's ridiculously hot in there, so when Rhodey shows up with a bottle of cold water, it takes nearly all of Tony's self-control not to jump him or challenge him to single combat for it.

Seeing his desperation, Rhodey merely hands it over with an amused huff.

"_Omigosh, thanks_," Tony breathes, snatching the bottle and taking a long swig from it. "I, like, totally love you, man."

Grinning from Tony's valley girl impersonation, Rhodey sits on the floor next to him. "Long day?"

Tony nods emphatically, bottle re-attached to his lips. He breaks it off with a satisfied sigh and caps it. "You have _no idea._ If I have to explain one more time that artificial intelligence doesn't mean he can _add numbers,_ I'll make DUM-E kill someone." He pats the robot's chassis proudly. "He's a _person_ and those _tourists_ are all hung up on the fact he doesn't have a calculator subroutine."

Rhodey is used to Tony's rants, so he just shakes his head and bumps their knees together in silent comfort. "Makes me glad I did aerospace and not whatever you did."

Tony hums noncommittally. They could have shared more classes that way, but he's a realist. He knows he can't keep Rhodey, and couldn't have kept him even if they'd become attached at the hip, because Rhodey is Navy. And Rhodey is a man of his word.

"Say," Rhodey starts suddenly, looking at DUM-E, "why is its—"

"His," Tony interrupts with a warning glare.

"—_his_ name 'dummy'? I thought it was something else," Rhodey finishes, the corner of his mouth tugging into a bashful smile.

"It was." Tony shrugs. "But that was a different robot. He's a new person now, and he deserves his own name." The humor module he'd added in the last software update had radically changed his personality. It had been a total bitch to code, too, but Tony is of the opinion that the capacity to understand basic humor is a key component of intelligence.

DUM-E chirps something—just a string of happy-sounding sounds, not Morse code for anything (though he can beep out a few limited words)—and lowers his mechanical arm to play with Tony's hair.

His creator bears it with the grace of a proud parent and pats the big lug on the arm.

"What does the name mean?" asks a feminine voice suddenly.

A very _familiar_ feminine voice.

Eyes widening in disbelief, Tony looks up—

Maria is smiling down at him, resplendent in a red off-shoulder summer dress and a white wide-brimmed hat.

—and jumps to his feet immediately. "Mom," he says, blinking. It almost sounds like a question.

Why is she here and not, say, shopping in Milan, or in the Stark Mansion, planning the next gala? Has something happened to Howard? Has he died? Is he _here_, too?

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?" Maria asks, interrupting Tony's brief processing overload. She's grinning at him, and her teeth are so white that they rival her pearl jewelry in shine.

"Uh," Tony responds automatically, wondering what she's talking about. She's already met Rhodey—and liked him, once she got over the shock of his skin color. "That's, uh, Rhodes, Mom."

Rhodey, having gotten to his feet as well, taps Tony's shoulder with the back of his hand and stage-whispers, "I think Mrs. S meant the dummy."

Rolling his eyes, Tony elbows him aside. "Stop calling him 'the dummy', _dummy_," he hisses, before turning to his mother and putting on his emergency smile. "That's DUM-E," he says, spelling it out for her benefit. "Version E of the Damn Useless Machine, but don't tell the reporters that." He winks at her.

Maria smiles winsomely, though there's still a sadness about the drooping of her eyes that no fake cheer or make-up can hide. "Hello there, DUM-E," she tells the robot, offering him her hand daintily. "I'm Tony's mother."

DUM-E chirrups and turns his claw to look at Tony, as if checking for instructions.

"Go on, she's a friend," Tony murmurs encouragingly, very happy with how the robot's personality came out. Curious, but not foolhardy. "She wants to shake hands. I taught you that, remember?" Because that is another important thing that makes him revolutionary: DUM-E is a learning AI.

The claw twirls in place for a second as DUM-E ponders that, and then the robot whirrs and takes Maria's hand gently.

"Mrs. Stark, I'm so glad you came," says a voice like a car honk from Tony's right, startling them.

Tony turns around to find the dean grinning like a Ken-doll at his mother. "Dean," he greets, inclining his head in a show of respect purely for his mother. "Came to hand over my PhD?"

The dean turns that fixed smile on him. "You will receive it during Graduation, just like everyone else." He grins at Maria again. "Mrs. Stark, would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of Mr. Stark?"

Maria's smile is brilliant—the smile of an actress being passed over for an Academy Award. "Mr. Stark regrettably was not able to attend, but we didn't want to squander your _generous_ invitation."

The dean's face falls a bit. "Oh. Well." He grins again, and this time his left eyebrow twitches. "May I interest you, then, in a tour of the facilities?" He offers Maria his elbow.

Oh.

The asshole invited his parents to wheedle funding out of them, all under the pretense of attending the award ceremony and the press conference about Tony's genius work. And, like always, Howard couldn't come.

_I want to rip the dean's throat out with my teeth,_ Tony thinks viciously out of the blue. He looks down and realizes he's clenching his fists at his sides. "Don't give me ideas," he mutters into his shirt, where the monster lies coiled around his waist.

"Huh? Didn't catch that," Rhodey says, elbowing him in the side. "Speak up, man."

Tony pulls away, not wanting to be touched right now. "I was talking to myself."

o

DUM-E gets the award.

Of course he does. His construction is impeccable in itself—the patents on the improvements Tony made are already being processed—but, on top of that, he's a demonstrated learning AI, as shown by how one of those middle-schoolers successfully taught him how to give people the bird _and_ that it's to be used as an insult.

Tony accepts it with his usual reserved-for-the-media smile, gives a little speech he invents on the spot about what this means for artificial intelligence, thanks his professors at MIT for guiding and supporting him, and then gets the Hell out of Dodge. On the way, he spots Rhodey and grabs him by the wrist, tugging him along.

When Rhodey asks what the fuck is up with him, Tony replies they are going on a road trip. Now? Yes. Where? Tony doesn't care, Rhodey can choose. Can they visit Rhodey's mother before he needs to clasp the leash back on? Sure thing.

They are packed and in Rhodey's car in less than two hours.

o o o

Rhodey's mom is a rotund lady with excellent hair and a deep, smoky voice. She nearly has a heart attack when she opens the door to find her son there without warning, and then proceeds to pull him into a hug.

Tony smiles softly at them and moves further out from Cynthia Rhodes's line of sight. He reaches into his pocket to stroke's Loki's head, comforting himself in the knowledge that at least _someone_ loves him, even if it isn't his mother and father.

When Cynthia parts from Rhodey to give him a once-over ("You're too skinny, Boy, what have they been feeding you?"), she spots Tony hanging out to the side and gasps. "Is this the Stark boy you've told me so much about?" she asks and, before Tony can react, enfolds him in a hug.

She smells of wilting flowers and her arms are heavy and beefy, but she's warm and soft and she feels like_ home._ Tony has never been hugged like that by anyone who wasn't Jarvis or Loki. _What exactly has Rhodey been telling her? _he wonders, and by the time he realizes that he should probably hug back, she's already pulling away.

Cynthia smoothes down his unruly hair and rests her small, calloused hands on his shoulders. "Thank you for helping my boy with chemistry," she tells him with a gentle smile. A few of her teeth are missing, but the ones still there are pearly white. "Between the two of us, I have no idea why he got into engineering! He's never had a head for numbers."

"Mom," says Rhodey, looking away and rolling his eyes, in the same tone of voice he sometimes uses to say _Tony, shut up before you finish embarrassing us_.

Cynthia merely ruffles his hair and then practically drags the boys into her house, berating Rhodey for coming by without calling first ("I would have gone to the grocery store! Now I'll have to make do with whatever your little brother left in the fridge!") and apologizing profusely to Tony about the state of her home.

Rhodey gives as good as he gets ("It was a _surprise_, Ma! Telling you would have defeated the purpose!") and Tony watches them with a smile, warm inside.

In his pocket, Loki purrs.

o

Cynthia and her husband David ("Call me Dave") have three children in total: James (22), Annabel (19), and Edward (16).

On Tony's first morning there, Dave yells at Annie for taking up the bathroom for hours on end. Eddy yells from his room that not even hours are enough to make her pretty so she might as well not bother. Annie tells Eddy to go to the gym because, fat as he is, no girl will want him, and then proceeds to remind her Da that she's been asking for her own bathroom since she was fifteen, and if only he weren't such a lazy-ass, she wouldn't bother anyone. Yet that same evening, they are all watching Who's The Boss on TV and Eddy is offering to hold down Annie's boyfriend while she kicks him in the balls for some comment he may or may not have made.

The same thing happens the next day, and again the next, and only Tony is exempt from the ribbing free-for-all. To be frank, though, he's awed by their ability to cuss out, insult, or outright fight with each other, only to turn around and make up the next second. He knows that if he said to Howard half the things Rhodey and Eddy tell their Da in passing, Howard would kick him out. He knows that if he berated Maria's appearance like Annie does her whole family's, his mother wouldn't speak to him for months.

Day two. Tony catches Eddy watching re-runs of Star Trek and joins him. Suddenly, it doesn't matter that Tony's already finished college despite being the same age as Eddy, who's still struggling to finish high school—they start talking about the new series set to come out in September, call each other _nerd_ and _geek, _and become instant day, they co-opt the TV to watch the movies, much to the chagrin of everyone else.

Day four. Dave's car stalls when he's trying to start it to go to work. Tony and Rhodey find him scratching his balding head at the contents of the hood and immediately push him aside. Tony's the one to fix the issue, and apparently just in time, too. When he crawls out from his little mechanic wonderland, designer shirt splashed with motor oil, Dave slaps him heartily on the back and thanks him profusely.

Day seven, more than halfway through the impromptu visit. Tony feels comfortable enough that he makes some wise-ass remark to Rhodey about just how many hair-care products there are in the house, and Annie overhears. She proceeds to tear him a new one, he retaliates, and then five minutes later they are talking about what beauty products Tony's mom uses.

Day seven is also the day he finally becomes a part of the family—i.e. fair game for the sass-offs, fights over the remote control, second helpings of dinner being shoved upon him, having to elbow people out of the way to use the bathroom every morning, and Cynthia's suffocating hugs.

Tony _loves_ it.

Loki, riding in his shadow or under his clothes all day long, can't complain either. He feeds so much during the day that he's completely tuckered out by the time they go to sleep.

o

When Tony and Rhodey drive back to MIT, they do so with a basket of sandwiches in the backseat and the entire Rhodes family following in the car behind.

Tony offers to pay for their hotel when they arrive back in Cambridge—since they put him up in their home so readily and practically adopted him despite his being a cuckoo's egg in their nest—but they are having none of it. They do let Tony give them a tour of the city—though there isn't much to see, aside from Tony's and Rhodey's favorite hangouts—and treat them to ice-cream, which apparently they all could sell their souls for if necessary.

One of the waitresses gives them squinty eyes and somehow manages to get every order except Tony's slightly wrong.

The Rhodes' don't say anything, apparently not noticing anything out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile, Tony is burning with the desire to stick his foot out and trip her—

_On it_, Loki announces suddenly.

—and hiding a smirk behind a spoonful of ice-cream.

Across the parlor, the woman trips. Her tray and all its contents clatter to the floor, glasses and bowls breaking. Her boss shouts at her and forces a mop into her hand.

A few seconds later, Tony feels a warmth spreading along his side again and, pretending to scratch his chest, discreetly strokes Loki's head.

o o o

Graduation is next day.

Tony gets there late because Loki insists on playing with him as he's putting on the gown.

By the time he gets there, most of the students are seated already.

His spot is between Suzanne Sobel and Victor Steinbock, whom he hadn't known were a couple up until this moment. He has to spend hours listening to them flirt over his head and, by the time Prof. Frank Morgan—the current reader and one of the few professors who ever liked Tony—gets to the S, he knows more about the sexual habits of his classmates than he ever wanted to know.

Then his name comes, full of pomp and ceremony:

"Mr. Anthony Edward Stark," reads Morgan, "Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, minor in Computer Science." He nearly runs out of air on the last words and inhales hurriedly as soon as he can.

Tony stands up, thinking _he's so lucky that MIT doesn't give out latin honors, or he might have suffocated,_ and starts walking towards the aisle—

"With Special Honors," his old Single Variable Calculus professor continues reading, sounding amused, "from the Department of Engineering for his thesis project, '_DUM-E: An Exploration in Self-Taught Artificial Intelligence Techniques as Applied to Advanced Robotics_'."

The crowd goes completely silent.

Tony makes his way to the stage, face impassive and head held high. Everyone and their mother stares at him, but he's used to being in the spotlight. He can tell what they are thinking.

A boy that young, already graduating with a double major and a minor? And special honors for a thesis project, on top of that?

Must be a mistake.

Must have paid off the school.

_Oh, but you_ are_ that clever, Tony_, his monster thinks at him, rubbing his shadowy face into the back of Tony's neck. _The cleverest human there is, my human._

Tony snorts at this show of possessive pride, but smiles all the same as he makes his way to the stage. He climbs on and takes the rolled up prop "diploma", before shaking the dean's hand firmly, like Obie taught him when he was seven.

The dean smiles at him and says, "Congratulations, Mr. Stark." He starts letting go of Tony's hand.

Arching an eyebrow, Tony holds on. "What happened to the doctorate?" he asks urgently.

The dean's smile turns rigid. "We'll talk later."

Of course. Tony lets him go and turns towards the exit. He sure hopes the dean has a really, _really_ good excuse for going back on his word after Tony not only completed the terms of the bet but also created a lot of positive publicity for MIT. If he doesn't…

_I'll haunt him for the next five years? _Loki offers softly, tendrils of shadow snaking around Tony's torso like arms, enjoying the roominess of the gown. Or _I can set him up for a crime and send him to prison forever, if you want._

Tony smiles briefly and mutters, "I can take care of it, but I'll remember," feeling rather loved. Then he spots someone in the crowd and _beams_.

Rhodey's family is waving at him, clapping and cheering. A sharp whistle and a shout of "You rock, Tony!" in Annie's high-pitched voice reach all the way towards him.

When he steps off the exit stairs to return to his seat, Tony sees Obie—of all people!—grinning proudly at him. He flashes the crowd a victory sign, protocol be damned, because_ someone came. _

Howard is, of course, nowhere to be seen. It's not surprising, given that he never came to Tony's things unless he was specifically cited by the headmaster.

It's not surprising, but it still rankles.

o

Obie is the first person to reach Tony, if only accidentally.

Tony finds him in the Advanced Robotics lab, playing ball with DUM-E like he used to do with Tony, when he goes to check how his robot has fared without his creator for nearly a week and a half. He doesn't interrupt, preferring to watch.

DUM-E is catching, Obie is throwing. Every time the robot drops a ball, Obie pauses the game to explain, in soft and patient tones, what DUM-E's doing wrong.

_I want to play too,_ Loki thinks in Tony's head.

Tony nods in agreement. He misses those Sundays when he was a kid. Back then, Maria still hugged him every now and then. "I see you found my pride and joy," He tells Obie from the door, grinning.

DUM-E and Obie both turn around to look at him in unison, one chirping and the other letting out a surprised "My boy!"

Tony comes forward and lets his honorary uncle clap him on the back. "Obie, why are you here?" he asks.

Obie puts on an expression of mock-hurt. "I_ just_ got here and you already want me to leave? I didn't even get to wish you '_happy birthday'._"

_He remembered, _Tony thinks, _I can't believe he remembered!_ What comes out of his mouth is, "Well, you can stay if you brought me a gift."

"What do you take me for, Tony?" Obie asks with a smirk, taking a little rectangular package from his suit's inside pocket. "Here you go." He lobs it at him.

DUM-E intercepts it, catching it flawlessly, and Tony has to coax him to hand it over.

He opens it carefully, truly not knowing what to expect. A wristwatch? A snake-in-a-can?

It's a tie. A tie with hotdogs on a navy blue background.

_Ugly!_ Loki screeches in joy from his position under Tony's graduate cap, shifting around restlessly. His tiny feet tickle Tony's hair as he stomps to the rhythm of _Ugly! Ugly! It's so ugly!_

Tony dissolves into peals of laughter, having to lean on DUM-E to stay upright. He puts it on over his gown, loosely tied around his neck. "Perfect for wearing when I'm a TA," he says, patting it like an old friend. "Students will never take me seriously."

Obie grins at him. "I thought you might break it out at a board meeting," he confesses. "But I take it you won't be working in your company any time soon, then?"

Picking up the ball Obie had been using to play with DUM-E, Tony throws it from hand to hand distractedly. "_My father_'s company," he corrects with a sneer that he can't help. "And no. I'm planning on getting a doctorate. Maybe two." He shrugs and passes the ball to DUM-E.

The robot chirps and moves his arm up and down—his version of a happy dance, probably—before throwing it at Obie. He's too excited, however, and throws it too hard.

The ball sails past Obie's head, and he ducks out of the way just in case. "You should be learning the ropes, Tony," he starts his lecture, looking around for the toy. He spots it and picks it up. "How else are you going to run it when Howard passes the baton down to you?" he asks, throwing it at Tony.

The teen catches it deftly and shrugs. "I won't need to," he grins and passes the ball back. "Because I'll have you to do it for me."

They laugh and start talking about how Tony's been, how Stark Industries has been, about the robot, about the possible applications of using robots like DUM-E in the factories, instead of fallible humans, etc. At one point, Tony finds out that Jarvis tried to get the day off to come, too, but Howard needed him, and plays it off like it doesn't matter—though he's secretly all warm inside because _Jarvis tried—_instead turning the conversation to Obie's (lack of) love life.

The whole time, they play three-way catch with DUM-E, and it feels like family.

o

Afterwards, Loki asks what a birthday is. When Tony explains that its a date when people give you gifts because you've lived one more year, Loki thinks at him, _Loki didn't get you anything._

Tony replies that he doesn't want anything. He has Loki and that's enough.

Loki kisses him.

o o o

The chat with the dean, a few days later, goes like this:

Tony walks into the office unannounced and demands to have his doctorate recognized.

The dean sighs in his high-backed chair and invites him to sit down. Explains that just because he's the dean that doesn't mean he can hand out honorary PhDs, not when the institution never has. Tells Tony about his trying to do it anyway, and the board not allowing it under any circumstance. He looks tired.

Tony shrugs and says that maybe the MIT isn't all that, if the dean can't follow through. Says that maybe he should go to another university, one that will appreciate his genius, and earn his PhDs there. He and Loki have no sympathy left for this asshole, who's only ever been nice to Tony if it furthers his own goals.

The dean backtracks quickly at that. He can't get Tony an honorary PhD, he says, but he can count DUM-E as credits in grad-level classes, so if Tony would be so kind to stay, he'd find his path towards doctorates much smoothed over.

Since Tony learns from his mistakes, this time he gets it in writing.

* * *

><p><em>"So you <em> do _ learn, after all_ , _" Yinsen says to the darkness, a smile in his voice._

_"Of course I do," Tony replies. "I couldn't be a scientist otherwise."_

_They lapse into silence for a moment, as Tony thinks of Loki and all the possible reasons why he hasn't come yet—maybe Loki couldn't cross the ocean, due to a combo of hydro- and aviophobia?—and Yinsen, well... Yinsen is a naturally quiet guy._

_Suddenly, Yinsen asks, "Why is Loki a hairdresser?"_

_Tony laughs. That was the whole point of Story Time, wasn't it? "He's so hungry lately that he would drain me dry if I were his only source of emotion. So I set up a beauty salon for him, where he can take nibbles from women seeking to unwind."_

_Yinsen laughs, finally getting the joke, and his mirth sets Tony off again, which in turn sets off Yinsen again, until they are both laughing so hard the guard knocks on their door and tells them to shut the fuck up._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Only one more chapter left!**


	13. Chapter 13

Morning comes down like a guillotine.

Yinsen and Tony are woken (rudely) by the terrorists and taken (dragged) to the workshop.

Raza reminds them that they have until nightfall to turn in the finished Jericho knock-off before turning around and stalking out with all but one of his group.

Nightfall is gonna be a tough deadline to meet, considering that they haven't worked a single minute on the missile.

The suit of armor, though, is another story.

Tony and Yinsen need to get the guard out of the room somehow because they are making their escape ASAP.

o

The guard stays there. Not guarding particularly well, but there.

Tony and Yinsen pretend to word very hard on the missile's innards, but instead they are doing a final check-up of the parts of the suit hidden there.

Lunch comes. The guard is replaced by another. He's just as "watchful" as the last one, but instead of sitting still, he wanders around touching things.

In any other circumstance, Tony would use this curiosity to get him onto their side, but right now? Right now he's high-strung, and every click and clatter and scritch the man makes behind his back makes his pulse rise.

o

The guard takes a potty break about an hour in. He just announces that he's pissing himself—or something to that effect, rude enough to make Yinsen uncomfortable—and leaves.

Tony and Yinsen don't even look at each other to check they are on the same page, they just run for the door. Yinsen welds it shut while Tony rigs it with explosives. When they are satisfied, they dismantle the fake missile and grab anything they can carry into the bigger blind spot.

Yinsen prepares Tony for the suit, wrapping stripes of leather around the places where the uneven steel edges would dig into it and padding his body with rags they've sewn into a rough jacket and pants.

o

It's been like ten minutes and nothing has exploded yet, so no one has discovered Tony's adventures in interior design.

"I bet our guard's taking a dump," Tony says as Yinsen helps him into the suit's arms. He tries one out, extending his fingers and moving it.

"I hope he's constipated," Yinsen replies, viciously.

"Yinsen!" someone shouts through the slot in the door. He lets out a stream of unintelligible words and finishes with, "Yinsen! Stark!"

Fuck.

"Say something," Tony whispers harshly. The suit of armor is a coffin around him and he can't do anything else; he's completely dependant on Yinsen keeping it together. "Say something back to him. Buy time!"

"He's speaking Hungarian," Yinsen whispers back, closing his eyes and shaking his head in frustration. "I don't..."

"Then _speak Hungarian_," Tony urges, wanting to punch Yinsen into action.

Yinsen nods and licks his lips. His eyes have too much white around the irises as he leans sideways and into view of the slot in the door. He says something that sounds like a panicked excuse even to Tony's untrained ears.

The guard isn't happy with that, and yells something back. He tries to open the door, rattling it and pounding on it when it doesn't move.

Tony and Yinsen hold their breaths in anticipation, but the impromptu welding holds and the guard goes away.

"He's bringing reinforcements," Yinsen deduces.

"Better hurry up, then," a voice says next to them.

Yinsen jumps back in alarm, his frayed nerves taking control of him.

Meanwhile, Tony just feels his shoulders relax for the first time in almost three months. "You took your sweet time, Asshole," he says, and he's proud that his voice doesn't waver once. "And for the record, I didn't need rescuing. Yinsen and I have it totally under control."

Loki arches a delicate black eyebrow. "And who would Yinsen be?"

Yinsen, at this point, has regained enough composure that he doesn't flinch when Loki turns to him. "That would be me," he says. He swallows audibly and stares unblinkingly at Loki. "And you must be Loki."

Loki grins pleasantly at him. "Indeed. Nice to—"

A sudden screech of tearing metal interrupts him, followed by a loud _boom_ and a percussive whoosh of hot air.

They've opened the door and found the explosives. Fuck.

"Yinsen, button me up!" Tony commands from where he's trapped in his self-made prison. "Loki, man the computer! Initialize power sequence!"

Yinsen and Loki get to work immediately.

o

The loading bar is only half full when the guards start coming in.

Tony is speaking in a low, steady voice, trying to keep Yinsen calm. "Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?"

Yinsen shakes his head. "We need more time," he says, face pale like a dead man's. "I'm gonna go buy you some time." He starts walking towards the door.

What? No!

"Stick to the plan!" Tony yells, unable to do move. "Yinsen! Yinsen, stick to the plan!"

Yinsen grabs a blood-splattered rifle from one of the dead bodies and turns towards the door.

Suddenly it clicks for Tony: Yinsen is going to _sacrifice himself to buy Tony time_.

"Loki, get him!" he yells urgently. "We _have_ to get out of this together!"

Loki nods and looks at Yinsen. His shadow opens its eyes and expands until it covers the entire wall behind Loki.

It breaks off into tendrils that then shoot along the floor towards Yinsen. They coil around his ankles and shoulders, and tug him backwards, to safety.

Yinsen yells and fights them, slapping at them like they're poisonous snakes. He tries to dig his heels in, but Loki's shadow is stronger and simply picks him up like a rag roll.

Four armed men stumble into the workshop and aim their weapons at them, fingers on the triggers.

"Stay here," Loki says, depositing Yinsen behind Tony and his suit of armor. Then he turns towards the terrorists and reaches a hand toward them.

His shadow—which is secretly part of himself, as he casts no real shadow—expands and covers the walls of the cave in pitch-black darkness. Eyes start popping up all over it; huge dish-sized eyes that focus on the armed men and narrow into gleeful half-moons.

The men let out screams and open fire on the eyes.

The pool of darkness expands faster than they can retreat. Vines like little hands reach out toward the men, snagging in their clothes and grabbing at their arms and faces.

The screams cut off like a radio turning off, and the room goes blessedly quiet.

When Loki coalesces back into himself, the terrorists drop to the floor like poisoned flies.

"Are they dead?" Yinsen asks. His hands are shaking even though he's clenched them into fists, and his eyes are again far too white around the edges.

"No," Loki replies, combing his disheveled hair back.

"Merely catatonic," Tony explains, though he's not sure that will make Yinsen stop freaking out. Whatever; they can all get therapy later.

The progress bar in the computer screen is at 99%. It turns to 100% as Tony is looking at it.

"Power sequence complete," he announces, and when he moves this time, the suit moves with him. "Yinsen, get behind me. Wait until it's clear to come out. Loki, protect Yinsen."

_Will do_, Loki thinks in Tony's head, helping Yinsen to his feet and staying by him.

Tony starts walking towards the exit.

Forty-one steps straight ahead. Then sixteen steps from the door, fork right, then thirty-three steps, turn right.

Then, strap Yinsen in the special harness, get Loki between the armor and Tony's skin, and they fly.

They are getting out of there.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: And that's all folks! For now at least. I'm planning a sequel, but I gotta finish my wip Coveted first, and that might take a while yet. Thanks for reading and reviewing (especially you, Nyx and NoToLogins, your comments always make my day).**


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